By Robert W. Wood, Contributor Phil Mickelson probably wishes he hadn’t mentioned his high federal and state taxes. See Golfer Phil Mickelson Is Not Alone In Fleeing Taxes. When a high income earner mentions high tax burdens, it’s likely to rub someone the wrong way and come off like sour grapes, no matter how deftly he says it.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Tag Archives: Right
Mississippi River shipping resumes at Ill. lock
A key stretch of the Mississippi River reopened to shipping Wednesday after hasty repairs were made to a lock damaged by a barge, marking the latest victory for stewards of the drought-plagued waterway they have maneuvered to keep open.
That crisis resolved, the Army Corps of Engineers is turning its attention back to the river’ creep toward record low levels because of the nation’s worst drought in decades. It remains confident the channel will be kept to at least the minimum depth required by barges.
This week’s closure of Lock and Dam 27 near Granite City, Ill., unrelated to the drought, was forced after barge damaged a gate on an auxiliary lock before dawn Tuesday, causing a traffic snarl that swelled before the lock reopened 17 hours later.
By midmorning Wednesday, 85 barges and 15 vessels still were waiting to pass through — slow but steady progress from the 142 barges and 19 vessels that were idled there at the traffic jam’s peak, Coast Guard Lt. Colin Fogarty said.
The speed in reopening that damaged lock was “pretty good,” considering that the Army Corps had suggested the repairs could take days, Fogarty said.
Army Corps spokesman Mike Petersen said that agency expects the river to reach its lowest point in recorded history by late next month as drought continues to grip much of the nation. The extended National Weather Service forecast calls for the river to dip to minus-6.1 feet at St. Louis on Feb. 18, the latest date on its outlook. It could sink lower after that. The current record is minus-6.2 feet, set on Jan. 16, 1940.
Crediting months of efforts by the corps, Coast Guard and other river interests, Petersen said he expects the river to stay open even then because a 9-foot-deep channel — the minimum for barge traffic — can be maintained even at minus-7 feet on the river gauge.
The zero mark on the gauge was an arbitrary figure established in the 19th century, reflecting a level that experts then believed the Mississippi would never dip below.
The Coast Guard makes the final decision on whether to close stretches of the river, and Fogarty said it’s possible that weight or size restrictions on barges may be tightened.
While reducing cargo weight helps barges ride higher, shipping costs increase because more barges are required to move the same amount of cargo and tow boats go through more fuel because more trips become necessary.
“The Coast Guard will do everything it can to keep this open,” Fogarty said. “Right now as the river stands, we are head and shoulders above where we were just a month ago as far as being prepared for low water levels.”
The biggest improvement in the middle Mississippi was near Thebes, Ill., where contractors used dredging barges and explosives in recent weeks to clear rock pinnacles, months ahead of schedule. But the corps has been dredging since summer in a roughly 200-mile stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Ill., to help clear the channel.
“You look at all the dredging work, the rock removal — we’ve been able to get the channel down to where we could break a low-water record and still keep the river open,” Petersen said. “You can’t stop a drought by engineering around it, but you can definitely give yourself a reliable, resilient channel.”
That work is helping now and will pay dividends in years to come if, as expected, the drought persists, he said.
“We might see low river levels next year,” Petersen said. “Long-range forecasts have us looking at another dry winter.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Paid Sick Days Should Be a Right, Not a 'Benefit'
By John Johnson 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Health
Gun Bans Offer Affirmative Action For Thugs
By capblack
A few years ago, a group of ne’er-do-wells tried breaking into my home and the abandoned house next door.
My steel security door kept them from getting in, and the shotgun I held was waiting if they somehow successfully broke in.
Because we had a Democrat district attorney whose checkered record on color-blind justice I’d challenged over the years, I knew that shooting them would result in:
A) Arrest. The local police at that time didn’t like my activism either.
and
B) Grand jury indictment, even though it was a home invasion with multiple suspects!
I called 911, told the dispatcher I was armed, and waited. Such is life when racist Democrats control your criminal justice system.
Like a pharaoh of old, Obama just signed a package of executive orders that reminds me of the above Cap Black real-life adventure.
Doctors will now serve as de-facto firearms enforcement officers, assessing whether certain patients need to be scooped up by law enforcement.
Sounds like a good idea; except in the hands of anti-gun liberals, don’t be surprised if Second Amendment supporters, Tea party members, and even Black conservatives find themselves fingered.
Liberals criminalize political differences, so I’d advise Right-leaning Americans to be very wary of Democrat doctors and other medical personnel!
They now have the power to do a lot more than writing you a prescription.
Another acute concern are phony allegations of mental illness being logged into proposed expanded background check databases to further disqualify dissidents from owning firearms.
If it sounds far-fetched, please consider how long liberals have worked to disarm average Americans. For a group of secular socialists, this goal is the closest thing they have to a holy grail.
Cloaked in the horrific mass-murder of White children to shock America’s shrinking majority into compliance, pro-gun rights citizens of all colors just got served notice.
Obama intends to disarm Americans. Democrats will trot out reliable fables of a racist, greedy gun rights movement anxious to make money off of misery.
They not-so subtly suggest that treason is also why so many oppose gun bans. Patriots will be spun as pariahs hellbent on waging war against their own country.
Meanwhile, back in the Hood, the laughter in the air is from thugs, gangs, and homicide rappers who never submit to background checks nor legal purchases for their stockpiles.
They’re also laughing because America’s first “Black” president ignores chocolate Klansman rampages because poor Black victims aren’t the Democrats’ top priority.
This gun ban means even more disarmed, law abiding victims for them to use as target practice.
Laughter is also heard South of the Boarder for the same reason.
Who said Affirmative Action was over?
Gun bans are affirmative action programs for individual thugs and street gangs.
That’s why they’re laughing so hard. Unequal odds over being shot by would-be victims are being evened by the US government.
Cap Black, the Hood Conservative
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15-year-old suspected of killing parents, 3 kids in New Mexico home
A horrific scene awaited officers responding to an emergency call at a New Mexico home — five family members dead, all with multiple gunshot wounds. The victims were later identified as parents and their three young children and the suspected attacker as their 15-year-old son.
Investigators trying to piece together what led to the violence late Saturday night found several guns believed used in the shootings, including one assault rifle, Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston said Sunday. The owner of the weapons hasn’t been determined.
“There’s no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on,” said Houston.
Nehemiah Griego, 15, was arrested on murder charges following the shootings at the residence in a rural area southwest of downtown Albuquerque, the sheriff’s department said.
Authorities identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2.
“Right now we’re to the meticulous points of processing the scene and collecting physical evidence, and this is a vast scene with a lot of physical evidence,” Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Sid Covington said Sunday.
Word of the shootings traveled quickly through the law enforcement community, and officials began offering their condolences for Greg Griego, a spiritual leader known for his work with firefighters and the 13 years he spent as a volunteer chaplain at the county jail.
“Chaplain Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community,” Fire Chief James Breen said in a statement. “His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed.”
Jail Chief Ramon Rustin said Griego was instrumental in the creation of the Metropolitan Detention Center‘s chaplain program and worked to get inmates integrated back into the community.
Griego also was a former member of the pastoral staff at Calvary, a Christian church in Albuquerque. As part of his work there, he oversaw the Straight Street program for jail inmates.
On Sunday, a police roadblock cut off public access to the narrow dirt road that leads to the home, which is surrounded by trees and an agricultural field on one side.
Neighbors said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighborhood.
Peter Gomez, a 54-year-old carpenter who lives about 200 yards from the home, said he had seen the family — a husband and wife and their four children — pass by many times but didn’t know them personally.
“It’s a horrible thing,” Gomez said. “You see all this stuff that happens all over the country, the shootings in the schools and theaters, and then it happens right here. It’s sad.”
Authorities declined to release details of any conversation that the 15-year-old had with investigators, but they said he was the Griegos’ son. The sheriff’s office said he is charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.
The sheriff’s office said it wouldn’t release any further information about the case until Sheriff Dan Houston holds a news conference Tuesday morning.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
David Henningsson: Upcoming changes to the Intel HDA drivers
Takashi Iwai, the Linux sound maintainer, is about to merge a patch set of about 150 patches into linux-next. These changes, in short, unify the different HDA codec drivers.
Introduction and background
First, the basics: HDA Intel is the current standard protocol for accessing your built-in soundcard, as well as HDMI/DisplayPort audio, and is used in almost all desktop and laptop computers since about 2005. In the HDA Intel world, there are controllers and codecs. The codecs also have a configuration, which tells which pins of the codecs that are connected to what input or output (this is set by BIOS/UEFI).
Hardware is very diverse: The HDA Intel driver supports at least 50 different controllers, and about 300 different codecs. On top of that, every codec usually support many different configurations.
The codecs come from 10-12 different vendors, and within the same vendor, it is more likely that the codec layout is somewhat like other codecs from the same vendor. As a result, the HDA codec driver is split up in 10-12 codec driver files, one per vendor. These files are to some degree copies of each other, but also contains every vendor’s specials.
What changes?
Takashi’s patches are solving a long term maintenance problem: as we want to add new features to the kernel drivers, we would previously have to do this once per codec – whereas with the unification of codec drivers, we would just have to add this code once. Or possibly twice, as the HDMI codecs will still have its own codec driver. In addition, new codec hardware is more likely to “just work”, or at least partially work, without explicit support in the kernel. The potential downside, of course, is that as you improve the driver to solve some edge case, you’re more likely to screw some other edge case up.
There’s not much of new features added in this new, generic driver at this point. However, if you have an “unusual” codec chip vendor, you might see minor improvements as these are brought up to feature parity with the more common codecs.
When does it change?
As usual, you can’t know until it’s in there. Takashi’s latest plan is to make the move for 3.9 for at least some of the codecs, and 3.10 for the rest of them.
Regressions and testing
Judging from the database you might have contributed to by yourself by submitting your alsa-info, there are about 6000 different machines out there, and there is not enough manpower to test them all. So we need a different approach. Conveniently, Takashi has written an emulator called hda-emu to test the codec driver code, and I’ve improved that emulator with some scripting, so that hda-emu effectively becomes an automated test suite. The test suite is still very incomplete, but it at least runs a few different tests such as faked playback, S3, and manipulating of volume controls, and checks if hda-emu crashes or reports an error. And sure enough, when running this test suite over all the alsa-infos in the database, a few regressions were discovered that I was able to fix.
So far, so good. If it weren’t for the fact that hardware often does not work exactly as advertised. The parser algorithm for reading the codec layout and creating a working kernel driver out of it, must now take all codecs from all vendors into account. The old vendor-specific parser might have done things in one way and the new parser might do things a different way, causing the audio to be routed differently.
As an example, assume the codec is broken in such a way that it advertises two audio paths, but in practice only one of the paths actually works. The new parser might then route the audio differently from the old one – and as a result it will look like audio should really work, in theory. In practice, there is nothing but silence. Another example could be that maybe the new driver will power down different parts of the codec in different order than the old driver did, causing your speakers to click.
How can I help?
Right now, what’s needed is more testing on real hardware. Takashi has called for testing of his hda-migrate branch of the sound-unstable tree.
If you’re running Ubuntu, I have made packages for 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04 – just download, install it (you might need to install dkms and kernel headers too). Then reboot and test. Simply uninstall the package and reboot when you’ve finished testing.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu
It’s A Protection Rifle, Not An Assault Weapon!
By jimmy nunua
Why do the constitutional, true Americans of the Right allow the left to demonize and humiliate them? When and where did the term “assault weapon” come to be? It appears that it started quite a while ago by Hitler speaking about his new gun design that he liked so much he called it “sturmgewehr,” or “Storm rifle.” This morphed over the years to assault rifle in military jargon but was never a term used by civilians.
The term is used by the military for training in assault situations. Hence the weapons are intended for assault.
But in the hands of the civilian population whose gun ownership purpose is for sport shooting, hunting, or defense, it is a protection rifle, not a weapon. Referring to civilian rifles (automatic or not) as assault weapons is improper usage of the word “assault”.
Calling gun owners’ protection guns “weapons for assault” infers civilian intent to assault someone. This is an insane idea propagated by the LSM and anti-gun advocates to propagate fear-mongering. Calling peace-loving protectors an assault threat is an assault on us personally. It ever sounds scary to me!
People keep asking why civilians need assault-style weapons. This truly is a moot irrational question. The term “protection” infers resistance to assault or harm. If people are going to attempt to assault you with assault-style weapons…your anti-assault protection plan better be able to stand up against the assault weapons of the enemy or criminal.
In short… fight fire with fire. The civilian population needs to be just as well-armed as anyone else, be it against criminals or an invasion force.
I have guns for protection and hunting. I have a protection anti-assault rifle, not an assault weapon that I want to use to assault people with.
Please gun owners…stop letting the left demonize you as a traitor and a threat because you are willing to keep protection guns and rifles at the ready to protect life and liberty and to enforce the peace.
Rallying The Right
By Steve Deace
Following the defeat of 2012, it seems as if everyone – yours truly included – has an opinion about where the conservative movement goes from here. But right now presents an excellent opportunity to rally the Right again.
Following the fiscal cliff fiasco, the next big battle inside the beltway will be the debt ceiling in March. Some Republicans who caved on the fiscal cliff are already talking tough. Take Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, for example. After voting for the largest tax increase in 20 years, Toomey is one of several Republicans now saying that the debt ceiling showdown may require a government shutdown if Democrats insist on more tax increases.
So with some key Republicans already throwing down the gauntlet, now is the time for the conservative movement to re-assert itself. The time for the licking of wounds has past. The time for leadership has arrived. We’re at our best when we let our principles lead the way. The two times I can remember the right-of-center coalition of evangelicals, conservative Catholics, libertarians, and the pro-growth/limited taxation crowd being truly unified since the 2004 election were the 2010 midterm elections and Scott Walker’s recall in Wisconsin last year.
Why?
Because those elections were clearly about principles, and principles unite us. Unlike Democrats who join that party out of identity politics, we become Republicans because of principles like the ones found in the party platform.
And the Republican Party platform is clear about two things: the rule of law has the obligation to protect the God-given right to life, and the government big enough to give you everything you need is large enough to take away everything you have. We have been struggling for a message that puts both of these principles into practice simultaneously. One that bypasses the in-fighting plaguing our movement for years now and mobilizes and energizes our grassroots to go on offense. The debt ceiling showdown provides us that opportunity.
Planned Parenthood received more than $542 million from the government last year, which means that an astounding 45% of its revenue came from the American taxpayer. Every one of us would agree that is simply inexcusable. Some of us may believe that based simply on the sanctity of life, given that Planned Parenthood is one of the leading child killers in America. Some of us may believe that’s simply a terrible waste of the people’s money at a time we’re flat broke and a symbol of our misplaced priorities. Both of us recognize that Planned Parenthood is one of the Left’s major political fundraisers. Regardless of the premise, we all come to the same conclusion.
Thus, now is the time for all of us to use this issue as a catalyst that unifies our various factions behind a shared principle—absolutely no increase in the debt ceiling should even be considered until all money for the child-killing industry is removed from the budget.
If we’re going to consider these things “private moral matters” then it is intolerable to ask the taxpayer to subsidize it, especially at a time when we’re flat broke and taxes are going up on everybody. If we wouldn’t ask the taxpayers to buy your next shot of tequila, jolt of trans-fats, or drag from a cigarette, then we shouldn’t ask them to buy your next condom or abortion. If someone wants to get their freak on, they can buy their own birth control pills or dental dams.
This week on my radio show, Dr. Thomas Woods, one of the most respected libertarian thinkers in the country, agreed with me. “Even if you’re a pro-abortion libertarian you don’t believe the taxpayer should be funding it,” Woods said.
If we cannot get Republicans to hold the line on this at this crucial time in our history, then there really is no point to having a Republican Party (or at the very least to having these Republicans). If the conservative movement isn’t willing to take the lead in forcing their hand, then there really is no point to our movement other than selling books and syndicating radio shows like my own. This is an easy first step to re-unify for the much bigger and longer battles that await us to return to constitutional government.
Concern over the growth of government and the resulting loss of personal freedom is what gave birth to the modern conservative movement. Concern about the sanctity of life is what swelled the ranks of the movement with Catholics who were once predominantly Democrats and evangelicals who previously didn’t even vote en masse. Regardless of which of those issues most trips your trigger, we cannot take back control of the Republican Party without each of them working in concert. And the Republican Party is worthless if we don’t wrestle away control from the cynical, feckless, and ineffective party establishment.
But we need a message to unify and mobilize us that is based on shared principles. This message does that. It allows us to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead of both sides fighting each other for control of the movement, we unite a movement around a shared principle to fight the real enemies to liberty and morality. We are better together. We cannot win if we’re not united. But calls for unity for unity’s sake fall on deaf ears. We must lead on genuine principle to create genuine unity.
We must rally the right for such a time as this, and this is the simple yet principled message to do it. Either we hang together, or we will all hang alone. If we can’t hang together on this one, then I’m not sure where we can.
Arkansas mom dies after 911 call not entered into system, son in critical condition
An Arkansas 911 operator did not enter a call into a computer system that would have notified police and fire dispatchers of a mother and son trapped inside a vehicle in a pond, authorities said Wednesday. The woman died hours later, and her 5-year-old son was in critical condition Wednesday, police said.
The Little Rock operator who handled the call from 39-year-old Jinglei Yi has been placed on paid administrative leave while authorities try to figure out what happened. The operator has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Yi called 911 about 8 a.m. Monday after her vehicle hit a patch of ice, went over a curb and ended up in the pond, Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said. A county dispatcher transferred the call to the 911 operator, who spoke with Yi briefly before hanging up and contacting an ambulance service.
An ambulance was dispatched a few minutes later to the west Little Rock pond, but police officers and firefighters weren’t dispatched until about a half-hour later — after the ambulance service called to verify that they were en route.
When the ambulance got there, the employee realized something was wrong because there were no police cars at the scene, Fox16.com reported. That’s when they radioed back to dispatch to find out what was happening.
“Right now, we don’t know where the breakdown occurred. If is was an operator error or if it was a mechanical error,” says Little Rock Police Sgt. Cassandra Davis.
Laura Martin, who directs the city police and fire departments’ communications branch, said the operator did not enter Yi’s call into a computerized dispatching system that would have alerted police and fire dispatchers. The operator also ended Yi’s call instead of using a transfer option that would have allowed her to keep Yi on the line while contacting the ambulance service, she said.
“Proper protocol would be … we have a one-button transfer switch where you get (the ambulance service) on the line and you remain on the line with them until you’re sure that they have handled the call,” Martin said.
On the 911 call, which The Associated Press obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, a county dispatcher describes Yi’s situation to the operator in Little Rock while Yi remains on the line.
Then, Yi describes her location and says there is water in her vehicle.
“The water is in my car right now,” she said.
The Little Rock operator asked Yi for her name and asked her to hang on.
“OK, ma’am, we’re going to get some help on the way for you, OK?” the operator said.
“OK. Thank you,” Yi said. Then the call appears to end.
Neither Davis nor Martin would identify the operator, who was hired in March and completed a six-month probation period in September.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
14 Great Words With No English Equivalent
By John Johnson 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Great Finds
Active, images and devices
As I wrote before, we are trying to make PA4 as stable as possible, and as well as it was noted by some people, this involves also having images for a wide variety of devices.
What I’m doing, is kindof even another step: making the image creation as easy as possible, so that is possible for people to contribute easily in the creatoin process of those images, (especially images for previously unsupported devices).
In Mer, that is the base of Plasma Active the OS images are created from an instruction file called kickstart. you can find a source repository that creates kickstart files for plasma active here:
git clone git://anongit.kde.org/plasma-active-kickstart.git
Then, what you have to do is installing a Mer SDK, following the instructions here. This is very easy, is more or less uncompressing a tarball and running a shell script inside it, and should work on any distribution.
Then, from inside the SDK chroot environment, go where you downloaded the git repo (your home is accessible from there) and do:
mer-kickstarter -e . -c latest-devel/plasma-active-latest-devel.yaml -o plasma-active-latest-ks/
it will create a kickstart for each of the supported devices in the plasma-active-latest-ks/ subdirectory, then:
cd plasma-active-latest-ks/ sudo mic create livecd plasma-active-i586.ks -o . --pkgmgr=yum --arch=i686 --logfile=plasma-active-build.log
And an iso file with the same name as the kickstart file will be created. Different devices may need different image format, such as “raw” instead of “livecd”
Right now just a few devices are supported there, what I want to achieve is to support there all the device types Active has been successfully ran on.
One thing I must say, the code in that repo is derived from the Nemo project (another Qt based project built on top of Mer) so also a better sharing of bits and pieces for device adaptations with Nemo would be awesome as well.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
Right wing Bobby Butler looking to rebound in New Jersey after poor season in Ottawa
NEWARK, N.J. – Lou Lamoriello has had a habit of finding players that other teams have given up on and getting them to produce for the New Jersey Devils.
The Devils president and general manger netted productive seasons from castoffs Ryan Car…
Source: FULL ARTICLE at NHL
Protest Planned At Inauguration Over Obama’s Stolen Identity
Those who support Attorney Orly Taitz’s challenge to Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as President are being urged to protest peacefully at inauguration proceedings on January 21, (the MLK, Jr. holiday,) and in front of the Supreme Court itself on February 15th when Justices will decide the merits of the challenge. Those making this unnecessary plea seem to forget that conservatives are always peaceful, even when confronted with the most inexcusable of antics by the other side.
“Well done, Doctor and good luck,” says licensed private investigator Neil Sankey to Orly Taitz on her website. “I will walk there if necessary and if you need me,” he adds, offering his services during the upcoming Court conference. Along with private investigator Susan Daniels, Sankey generated a large public, social security database in a lengthy research project titled “List of Properties associated with Barack Obama and his family.” The powerhouse conservative blog Coach is Right posted the details of this story on April 10, 2011, writing: “Barack Obama reportedly has 27 different social security numbers under 21 different personal and/or familial name variations in 22 different states plus the District of Columbia.”
Though Sankey is hardly likely to be part of the Court proceedings, he speaks for countless Americans outraged that the executive authority of the United States has been usurped by an individual clearly unqualified to hold the nation’s highest office.
Harlem Pastor James David Manning is convinced that, “Character matters. Nobody talks about this…the fact that the Illinois State Bar ruled Obama is not fit to practice law and disbarred him!” Calling it beyond outrageous, Rev. Manning wonders how American citizens could allow the man to serve as President.
Beginning with the February 2012 ruling of Georgia judge Michael Malihi—a ruling based neither in law nor fact—Barack Obama has been carefully ushered through an extra-legal judicial process designed to keep him ensconced in the White House. State and federal law has been ignored and the Constitution thrown aside in perhaps the most disgraceful abuse of the public trust in the nation’s history.
A week ago, Florida Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll denied plaintiff Michael Voeltz’s challenge to Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility, setting aside Florida statute in the process! In fact, rather than deal with what he found to be some very inconvenient Florida law, the judge chose to base his decision on a movie script as he paraphrased a scene from Miracle on 34th Street: “The fictional Judge Henry X. Harper from New York declares this man to be president, this court will not dispute it,” ruled Carroll. The laws of the land, even the Constitution, have become objects of mockery and derision to those charged with holding such things in the highest regard.
On February 15th, the nine justices of the Supreme Court will decide if the Taitz challenge of Noonan et al v. Bowen may proceed. It was Chief Justice John Roberts himself who decided to afford the Court this opportunity to decide an issue summarily dismissed by other judges in lesser courts.
Right now, only people like Neil Sankey, Susan Daniels and David Manning appear interested in the law, the Constitution or the nation. We’ll see what the Court decides.
Photo credit: aaron_anderer (Creative Commons)
Chicago Police Chief: We’ll Shoot Licensed Gun Owners
Under Chicago’s Police Chief Gary McCarthy and the hack that hired him, Chicago has quickly become Murder City USA. Last year by a substantial amount, more Americans died from gunfire in the Windy City than died in Afghanistan. The gunfire is coming from the violent street gangs that infect the streets of Chicago.
Since they have failed to solve the real problem of gunfire killing people in their streets, the current administration has invented a problem their media pals can fool the dupes that vote for them into thinking they are solving. Their invented problem is: what to do about “dangerous” people who are licensed gun owners?
Since their constituency of public housing dwellers doesn’t count when they complain, honest licensed gun owners who can put a spotlight on their failure to make the streets safe must be targeted and shut up. Last week McCarthy publicly warned licensed gun owners his officers would shoot them if they: “[turn] with a firearm in their hand” at the scene of a police involved incident.
Parroting the liberal lies about licensed gun owners always make things worse when they attempt to use their gun to defend themselves or others, McCarthy said: “I don’t care if they’re licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained… putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I’ll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we’re going to have tragedies as a result of that. I’m telling you right up front.”
McCarthy and his boss must have realized that kissing up to street gangs to get them to stop shooting people doesn’t work. With no other options they are now threatening honest citizens licensed to possess and use firearms to save their own lives. Can confiscation be far off?
LightSquared Lenders Fight for Right to Go After Falcone
LightSquared’s lenders Wednesday pressed their case that they should be allowed to go after Phil Falcone and his Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund firm for a July 2011 loan made to LightSquared, a transaction they say benefited Harbinger and could hurt other creditors.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Business Headlines
4 dead in Tulsa apartment include twins aged 23
Twenty-three-year-old twins were among four women found dead inside an apartment after an apparent daylight shooting in a crime-scarred south Tulsa neighborhood, city police said Tuesday.
Officers released the identities of the victims but, aside from the twins, did not say how the women knew each other or if they were related. Also discovered in the Riverwood apartment was a 3-year-old boy who was not wounded in Monday’s shooting spree.
Detectives and officers were “beating the bushes” to figure out what happened, police spokesman Leland Ashley said Monday.
“Right now, we have no clear-cut suspect,” Ashley said. “I don’t want to strike fear in the community tonight, but we do have an individual or individuals who murdered four people. Do we know if there was a motive, like a jealous lover? We don’t know that. We can’t say if it was random or if someone knew (the victims).”
Police on Tuesday identified the victims as the twins, Rebeika Powell and Kayetie Melchor; Misty Nunley, 33; and Julie Jackson, 55. Police initially said the victims were in their late teens and early 20s and that the boy who survived was age 3.
Authorities have not released the name of the boy, who was taken into protective custody.
The women were found in a unit at the Fairmont Terrace Apartments. The gated complex has a nighttime security patrol but police believe the killings occurred in broad daylight. Officer Jill Roberson said police received a 911 call about 12:30 p.m. Ashley said someone had spoken to someone at the apartment less than an hour before then.
At the run-down apartment complex, bed sheets or cardboard hang as improvised draperies in many windows behind a black wrought-iron gate. The guard shack is empty and signs read “Curfew 10 p.m. for everyone, everyday” and “Photo ID required to be on property.” Three of the units are burned out and boarded up with plywood.
Riverwood has long been plagued by crime, and Tulsa police say there were two murders in the Fairmont Terrace Apartments in 2012. Residents say gunfire and break-ins are part of the pattern of their everyday lives.
“We’re in the eye of the storm,” says Charles Burke, a 48-year-old construction worker. “You’re on your toes. You can’t be too careful.”
Neighbor Jamie Kramer, a 28-year-old mother of two young children, has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years. She said the crime seems to come in cycles and that things had been pretty quiet for several months until Monday.
“It escalates and goes back down, it escalates and it goes back down,” she says. “Usually, it’s bad when it gets hot.”
Neighbor Ladawn Mack, a 25-year-old cashier, says she’s used to seeing police cars in the street, and that Monday’s quadruple homicide is enough to make her take extra precautions.
“We have a house alarm and I’ve always had a gun for my home,” Mack said.
Resident Alexis Draite, 20, recently moved to Tulsa from Oklahoma City, believing it to be safer.
Her strategy for staying alive: “Lock the doors, lock the cars and don’t stay outside longer than you need to.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Lottery winner's cyanide death being investigated
Urooj Khan had returned to Chicago from the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia inspired to lead a better life and had sworn off buying lottery tickets — except just this once.
To his astonishment, the scratch-off ticket was a $1 million winner. But just as he was about to collect his money, Khan died suddenly. There were no signs of trauma and nothing suspicious, and the Cook County Medical Examiner‘s office said he died July 20 of natural causes.
Now, authorities have determined that Khan, 46, ingested a lethal dose of cyanide. The finding, spurred by a relative’s pleas for an expanded screening, has triggered a homicide investigation, the Chicago Police Department said Monday.
“It’s pretty unusual,” said Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina, commenting on the rarity of cyanide poisonings. “I’ve had one, maybe two cases out of 4,500 autopsies I’ve done.”
Khan, who owned a number of dry cleaners, stopped in at the convenience store near his home in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the city’s North Side in the summer and bought a ticket for an instant lottery game.
Convenience store clerk Ashur Oshana told The Associated Press on Monday that Khan had gone on the pilgrimage and told him he was done gambling. But Khan couldn’t resist and scratched off the winner in front of Oshana.
“Right away he grabbed my hand,” Oshana said. “He kissed my hand and kissed my head and gave me $100. He was really happy.”
At an Illinois Lottery ceremony days later, Khan recalled that he jumped up and down in the store and repeatedly shouted, “I hit a million!”
“Winning the lottery means everything to me,” he said at the June 26 ceremony, also attended by his wife, Shabana Ansari; their daughter, Jasmeen Khan; and several friends. He said he would put some of his winnings into his businesses and donate some to a children’s hospital.
Khan opted for a lump sum of slightly more than $600,000. After taxes, the winnings amounted to about $425,000, said lottery spokesman Mike Lang. The check was issued from the state Comptroller’s Office on July 19, the day before Khan died. It was cashed Aug. 15, Lang said, explaining that if a lottery winner dies, the money typically goes to his or her estate.
Calls to Khan’s family went unanswered Monday. A knock on the door at the family’s small, two-story house late Monday afternoon wasn’t answered.
Khan was pronounced dead July 20 at a hospital, but Cina would not say where Khan was when he fell ill, citing the ongoing investigation. The external exam showed no signs of trauma on Khan’s body.
No autopsy was done because, at the time, the Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t generally perform them on people 45 and older unless the death was suspicious, Cina said. The cutoff age has since been raised to age 50. After the basic toxicology screening for opiates, cocaine and carbon monoxide came back negative, the death was ruled a result of the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries.
Cyanide can be inhaled, swallowed or injected. Deborah Blum, an expert on poisons who has written about the detectives who pioneered forensic toxicology, said using cyanide to kill someone has become rare partially because it’s difficult to obtain and easy to detect — often leaving blue splotches on a victim’s skin.
“It has a really strong, bitter taste, so you would know you had swallowed something bad if you had swallowed cyanide,” Blum said. “But if you had a high enough dose it wouldn’t matter, because … a good lethal does will take you out in less than five minutes.”
It takes only a small amount of fine cyanide powder to be deadly, she said, as it disrupts the ability of cells to transport oxygen around the body, causing a convulsive, violent death.
“It essentially kills you in this explosion of cell death,” she said. “You feel like you’re suffocating.”
After the initial cause of death was released, a relative of Khan’s asked authorities to look into the case further, Cina said. He would not identify the relative. The full results came back in November.
“She (the morgue worker) then reopened the case and did more expansive toxicology, including all the major drugs of use, all the common prescription drugs and also included I believe strychnine and cyanide in there just in case something came up,” Cina said. “And in fact cyanide came up in this case.”
Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Melissa Stratton confirmed the department was now investigating the death, and said detectives are working closely with the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Investigators will likely exhume the body, Cina said.
Oshana said he was shocked to hear that someone might have killed Khan.
“I’m very sorry for him,” Oshana said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Plasma Active: stable, devel and bleeding edge
Every so many months we roll a new Plasma Active release. We’ve done three big releases so far and are working on a fourth for release in the early Spring. These releases are great for people using Plasma Active on a device or for device integrators looking to make a releasable product.
If you want to stay on the leading edge, however, you can follow the devel repositories from the Open Build Service. This is fun as you get to see our work in near real-time. At least when things build, and since we’re talking about an entire operating system stack for these images that doesn’t always hold. The devel repositories not only include our own work, but also new work done by the Mer community. Sometimes it can get a bit chaotic.
One of the things we wanted to change was the pain and difficulty of making production quality releases in the midst of the occasional chaos. One step towards doing this has been to adopt a new policy for the plasma-mobile repository: the master branch should always be stable. There should be no point in time when a feature freeze just to get things stable for a release is necessary. Development happens in branches, these branches are merged into an integration branch for testing and when proven then they are merged into master.
This will make it a lot easier for different groups putting out products on different schedules to be able to create their own release timetable: pick your dates and whenever you decide to branch from master it should be in a good state. There is no requirement in this scenario for everyone to follow the same release “cadence”.
It also means that people who wish to follow development can do so in a rather less chaotic environment. They can follow the work in master and it should always be relatively unbroken. Releasable, even. Put another way, this shift in our development workflow allows us to treat plasma-mobile as a rolling release.
If it works for the plasma-mobile repository, I want to make the same shift in all the repositories (which we have control over anyways 🙂 that go into making KDE’s Plasma Workspaces.
Of course, how do we test that integration branch I mentioned earlier? On Plasma Active we now have a repository that draws from the integration branch. So those of us who want to follow development and can live with beta quality features and the occasional annoyance can track integration on our devices. This helps prove features before merge into master.
How hard is it to use to the integration branch? Right now you have to edit some text files in /etc to set up zypper to draw from the correct repos. This isn’t much fun, though and so in Plasma Active 4 (or if you grab a devel build 🙂 you can just visit the Development page in the Settings app:
Then on the next system update you’ll get the integration branch versions of things. Easy peasy.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
Walking Dead Saves Will Carry Over
Telltale is working on a way to implement a save import feature for the next season of The Walking Dead game, an interview on Red Bull’s website reports.
“Right now we are just starting to form the concept for season two. This all remains to be seen but we are definitely figuring out how to carry the saves over,” said Telltale’s CEO and co-founder Dan Connors, asked what the plans were for a second season of the game.
The implications for such a feature are many and various; The Walking Dead ends on a pretty definitive note, as anyone who’s finished it will know, but is it possible that you’ll encounter surviving characters again in Season 2, or learn what happened to those characters whose fate was ambiguous at the end of episode 5?
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Video Games
Right way to change time for a RHEL server
By RHCE
I had the query of what would be the right approach to change the time on the RHEL server. I have the following ways to do that:
1) # date -s “2 OCT 2006 18:00:00″
Or
# date –set=”2 OCT 2006 18:00:00″
2) # date +%Y%m%d -s “20081128”
The second option though would only change the date but not the time.
I hope, my query is clear about what is the right way to change time for a RHEL server.
Please revert with the reply to my query.
Regards