As Tech Crunch reports, “the State Department has demanded that new blueprints for a fully 3-D-printed gun be taken offline just a week after they were posted. The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance is forcing outspoken Second Amendment crusader Cody Wilson to remove the downloadable 3-D printer files from Defcad.org under expert laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).”
"You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere." --Mr. Universe, Serenity (movie)
Note: I have posted these files as an act of free speech, and I claim my 1st Amendment rights to do so.
I am not a lawyer, but this is what I understand: If you use these files, and you are not a Special Occupational Taxpayer, make these only for yourself, not for sale or trade. And if you do, include a metal part (the firing pin) as DefCAD recommends, or you will be in violation of the (unconstitutional) Federal law against "undetectable firearms." In fact, I recommend you paint your 3D printed guns with shiny metal paint, just so this stupid "undetectable" talking point is completely defeated.
Here is a link to the US BATFE regs on making your own firearm, 3-D-printed or otherwise. Thousands of us have made our own firearms before. The plans have been on the Internet for years. Why now? Because they're skeered, that's why.
Ol' Backwoods has been busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger lately, doing some interviewing. I have both evidence and a feeling that my group where I work is going to be closed, and the people let go, just like they have let go more than 100 people since last year. Moreover, we have new management that does not appreciate what I have done for the company for the last ten years. So, I am looking for another job.
One of the things Ol' Backwoods is trying to do is to escape the cubicle. I want to find a job where I can work in my extensive home electronics lab, and not have to travel every day to a building in some stinking industrial park in the stinky end of some city, just to be walled up in a cubicle where I cannot see the sun all day, just to do the same thing. Burning gasoline and money just to do something I could just as easily do in my home lab is nonsense.
Sure, I may have to travel to their facility for special-purpose equipment, like temperature chambers and whatnot. But I can do that on an as-needed basis, and not have to have the price of being stuck in a cube.
If I can work at home, I can look out the window at my garden, and enjoy the beautiful and delicious things growing in those beds. I can have my music as loud as I want it. I can work any hours I want. I can leave during the day, and work late into the night if I have to, because I'm just upstairs if my family needs me.
Freedom. That's what escaping the cubicle means to me.
And, based on how I work on my home electronic project, I believe my quality of work will go UP, not down, when I escape the cubicle.
Ol' Backwoods has a small solar/battery system that I built, used to power my ham radios, lights, a fan and miscellaneous loads in my electronics lab.
I'm storing energy in a Group 27 12V marine-type, AGM-deep-cycle, lead-acid battery, like this one, except mine is a different brand. It has a nominal capacity of 92 Amp-Hours. For the uninitiated, this means I could run a 1-amp load (like my LED bench light plus my ham radios in receive mode) for approximately 92 hours.
The battery charge is maintained with a small 120-volt "Battery Tender" type maintainer/charger.
The battery can also be charged via two 20-Watt '12-Volt' solar panels, in series.
Yes, in series. No, it doesn't 'kill' my 12-Volt battery. Hang on, Ol' Backwoods will explain.
At full sun, my two panels in series produce 37 Volts open circuit; that is, with no load on the panels except my digital voltmeter (< 0.01 μAmps).
Data plate on solar panel #1
At full sun, with a load in the range of 1.2 Amps to 0.1 Amps, the panels in series produce between 13.6 and 14.6 Volts. Why does the voltage drop so much? Because the current from a silicon solar cell is a nonlinear function of the terminal voltage. Solar cells have what the industry calls a Maximum Power Point (MPP), which is a combination of voltage and current at which the produce maximum power. Usually, the MPP is marked on the solar panel's data plate, like mine, at the right.
At my latitude, and without adjusting
Data plate on solar panel #2
the solar panels' tilt (this is explained later in this article), I am getting about 80% of the one of the panels' maximum power, about 16 Watts.
If you are getting 80% of the rated power on only one panel, why did you connect two of them in series, Backwoods? If you are getting 1.1 Amps at 14.6 volts, why not put the two panels in parallel, and get 2.2 Amps at 14.6 volts, or 32 Watts instead of 16?
I could do that, but it would only work efficiently when the sun is high and bright. At lower angles, or when it is cloudy or hazy, having the 2nd panel in series boosts the voltage, so that I can still charge my battery even in non-optimum conditions. The 2nd panel is my backup for lower-light conditions.
For calculating the optimum tilt of the panels for various times of the year, or even a fixed tilt, here is an excellent guide.
Calculating my roof angle
Ol' Backwoods happens to have a large roof surface that faces south, and is turned ever-so-slightly to the west.
As a first approximation, I wanted to know how bad it would be if I simply put the solar panels at the same tilt as the south-facing roof, what kind of efficiency figures should I expect. Well, that let me to the need to calculate my roof angle. Sure, I could have measured it, but I had a photo of the side of my house, and I used the inverse tangent of the rise and run of the roof (in pixels) to calculate the roof angle from the horizontal, in degrees.
The easiest installation is just to lay the solar panels at the roof angle, and leave them in the same tilt all year. There is a calculation on the website listed above for that. To orient you, zero tilt angle means the panel points overhead, straight up. Positive angles points more toward the equator (south). Negative angles point more northerly; in the northern hemisphere, where I live, all the angles are positive.
Optimum Angle, Fixed Angle All Year
My latitude: 35.9 °
lat * 0.76 + 3.1 = 30°
My south-facing roof is pitched at 32.1°; therefore, it angle is nearly optimum.
There is also an equation for optimum angles if you are adjusting the solar panel angles twice a year, on March 30 and September 12th. In the Northern hemisphere, you go the "summer" angle on March 30 and the "winter" angle on Sept 12; in the Southern hemisphere, it's reversed.
Adjusting Twice a Year (Mar 30 & Sept 12); Optimum Angles:
Best summer angle: lat * 0.93 - 21 = 12 °
Best winter angle: lat * 0.875 + 19.2 = 51 °
Similarly, there is a small efficiency gain for adjusting the panels 4 times per year.
Adjusting Angle 4 Times a Year (April 18, Aug 24, Oct 7, March 5)
Best tilt for summer: lat * 0.92 - 24.3 = 9°
Best tilt for spring/fall: lat * 0.98 - 2.3 = 32.8°(nearly perfect for my roof angle!)
Best tilt for winter: lat * 0.89 + 24 = 56°
(This post will be modified to add more information.)
One of my state newspapers, the Charlotte Observer, carried an article from the execrable left-wing McClatchy group, gently chiding one of my elected representatives, Rep. George Holding (R-NC) for always voting 'NO' on more federal spending.
By Renee Schoof
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted: Thursday, Apr. 25, 2013
Olivier Douliery - Abaca Press/MCT
Congressman George Holding (R-NC) looks on during a Foreign Affairs Joint Subcommittee hearing on breaking the Iran, North Korea, and Syria
Store
WASHINGTON--George Holding promised voters he’d go to Washington to cut spending, and four months into the job, he hears pitches for what sound like good programs. But his answer is often the same:
“Sorry. But no.”
As a member of Congress, Holding has had chances to make good on his promise to cut spending. He voted against $33 billion in supplemental spending for Superstorm Sandy relief, and against an estimated $46 million proposal to preserve Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields. He said he opposed the Sandy supplemental bill because some of the money was for non-emergency spending unrelated to the storm. But he supported legislation that sent immediate aid for the storm victims. ... Like every member of Congress, Holding is constantly besieged with requests. He recent heard a plea from the American Heart Association for $35 million to pay for a campaign to warn people about the signs of high blood pressure. It isn't part of a bill, so he didn't have to decide right away. The group said the money could help save 1 million lives.
“That sounds great, but where’s the money coming from?” Holding said in an interview later. “ You've got to say ‘no’ somewhere.”
(bold mine) It's about time we had a representative that held the porked-up federal government to accound.
I immediately wrote Rep. Holding this email, thanking him:
Subject: THANK YOU for saying "NO" to more Federal programs!
Rep. Holding, as you know, the Federal government is out of money, and via the Federal Reserve, is "printing" billions and billions more than it receives in taxes. And in this climate, people STILL clamor for more spending!
When I read this article in the Charlotte Observer, I found that one of my representatives was keeping his promises to vote against spending
I hope, sir, that throughout your tenure in the House, you vote against every new federal program that is proposed, and that you do not vote to spend ONE DIME MORE until the Federal government gets its fiscal house in order, or the dollar collapses, whichever occurs first.
I know the "free stuff army" always wants more, but I wanted to say "THANKS" all the same.
Apparently, this shirt will get
you arrested in Logan County, WV
schools.
HAHA! Remember the kid in West Virginia who got suspended from school and
arrested(!) by the local police for wearing this NRA shirt? Well, he was re-instated (under threat of massive lawsuit), and the day he came back to school, OVER 100 STUDENTS show up wearing the same shirt!
It didn’t hurt that a video turned up that showed a teacher yelling at Jared for refusing to turn his shirt inside out, while his fellow students were chanting his name in support.
Although the petulant school did not apologize or talk to Jared’s father, his suspension turned out to only be a day long.
The Marcum family, their lawyer Ben White and the gun rights group Sons of the Second Amendment didn’t just meekly accept the school’s non-apology.
Jared Marcum returned to school wearing the SAME SHIRT. Moreover, he was joined by 100 other students wearing NRA “Protect Your Rights” shirts that were provided by Sons of the Second Amendment. None of them were suspended or arrested for wearing the shirts.
Don't mess with West Virginians, you leftist teachers.
Remember
a few months ago, when the LAPD were blasting at every blue truck in
the city, because
Don't shoot, bro! We're not Dorner!
they were chasing rogue cop Sgt. Christopher Dorner? A judge awarded the two ladies who owned this truck (which they used for their newspaper-delivery business) 4.2 MILLION IN DAMAGES! And, a new truck to boot.
Way to go, LAPD! Super professional! Only cops should have guns, eh?
Good grief, what's the crime in that? I'm
sorry, but New York City just isn't American. If you are this afraid
of BB guns, you should be in a psych ward, or leave the country.
From the story:
An anonymous coworker summed up the spirit of the times after 20-year-old Bernard Goal was arrested for making air rifles in his New York University dorm room: “It’s very scary to know there were [BB] guns one floor below me. I had no idea.”
"Bulletproof
glass" in a business is a joke, another feel-good Progressive 'solution'
to the problems they
'Bulletproof glass' isn't for rifle calibers.
themselves caused by disarming everyone but the
criminals. ANY 30-caliber or greater rifle, including your granddaddy's 1903 Springfield
(which shoots that newfangled .30-06 cartridge--oh wait, that was
introduced over 100 years ago) can punch holes in so-called
"bulletproof" glass.
The police should not be surprised by this, but many are, since few actually have broad firearms experience.
Quote of the Day
"The
Utopian schemes of levelling [wealth redistribution], and a community of
goods, are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all
property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government,
unconstitutional. Now, what property can the colonists be conceived to
have, if their money may be granted away by others, without their
consent?"
Samuel Adams, in a letter to fellow founder Dennys De Berdt, January 12, 1768.
Yeah, the Founders were well aware of socialism. AND THEY DESPISED IT.
House bill 937 in the North Carolina House is good for firearms freedom; our friend Sean Sorrentino down yonder at An NC Gun Blog, and David at NCRenegade have the down-low on it. Sean opposes the bill, calling it "mixed, mostly negative", but the GRNC appears to be supportive. Put me in the supportive category, at least until we see what amendments get added.
GRNC says:
No, it isn’t perfect, but it is pretty good. This bill will get us badly needed restaurant carry, clean-up state-wide uniformity on parks carry to eliminate abuse by anti-gun municipalities, and will allow employees with permits to keep handguns locked in cars while working at higher education facilities.
Yes, we want more, such as storage at work for everyone, but this represents progress in the direction of freedom.
I contacted all the members of the NC Judiciary Subcommittee A, which is responsible for moving the bill to the full house, and received a very nice reply from Rep. John Blust:
Thank you for contacting me regarding House Bill 937, Amend Various Firearms Laws. I am the Chairman of the Judiciary A Committee which is holding a hearing to move the bill tomorrow, April 24, at 10:00 a.m., so I do support the bill.
Representative John M. Blust
House District 62
Room 2208 Legislative Building
Raleigh, NC 27601
919-733-5781
The NC State House's Judiciary A Committee approved a measure this afternoon that would significantly expand gun rights in North Carolina. HB 937 would allow (among other things) concealed carry holders to have firearms on university and community college campuses so long as they were locked in their vehicles.
Representatives of the National Rifle Association, Grass Roots North Carolina and other gun owner rights groups endorsed the bill during the committee hearing, saying it granted changes long sought by gun owners.
"With respect to the campus provisions on this bill, frankly, it's more limited than we wanted," said Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, adding that his group still supported the bill. "The entire purpose of this is deterrence. We are looking at deterring violent sociopaths from crimes on campuses."
The campus provision applies to all public community college and university campuses in the state. Independent colleges and universities would have the choice of whether to allow firearms on campus but would have to post a prohibition.
John adds,
The bill would also allow carry in restaurant and eating establishments that serve alcohol as well as clarify the General Assembly's intent on park carry.
UPDATE #2 4/24/13 9:00PM EDT:
Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC), our bulldog of a state civil rights organization, has issued an alert on the bill. Text below, but it looks like anti-gun forces tried to stop it from coming out of the Subcommittee:
After lengthy debate and after rejecting numerous anti-gun amendments, the NC House Judiciary A Committee today passed House Bill 937. The bill will now head to the House floor for a vote, likely next week.
In its present form, HB 937 would expand concealed carry into:
Restaurants
Assemblies of people for which admission is charged [movies! -BWE]
College campuses (provided firearms are kept in locked vehicles); and
Parking lots of state office buildings.
HB 937 would also clean up flaws in the parks carry language passed in HB 650 under which municipalities continue to flout the law by banning guns in entire parks.
During sometimes rancorous debate, Representatives Darren Jackson (D-Wake , GRNC 0-star), Deborah Ross (D-Wake, 0-star) and others proposed amendments designed to be “poison pills” for the bill.
In testifying against the bill, North Carolinians “Against Gun Violence” director Gail Neely perjured herself to the committee by regurgitating a study which she claimed dealt with concealed handgun permit-holders, despite the fact that Valone had two weeks ago produced a copy of the study for her (and audience of an ACLU forum) demonstrating clearly that her claims were false.
Rep. Jackson introduced anti-gun amendment after anti-gun amendment in an attempt to “run the clock” on the bill until he was shut down by Committee Chair Rep. John Blust (R-Guilford, ****), who brought the bill to a vote.
Hopefully, restaurant carry gets farther in the NC House than it did before.
UPDATE #12, 4/23: A liberal woman, previously a self-admitted hoplophobe, caught in the government raid of Boston, suddenly woke up to the obvious truth:
Boston-area residents were told to “shelter-in-place.”[...] I realized at that moment that the police cannot protect me from the Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs of the world. [...]
In the middle of that night listening to the Boston police scanner, I evolved.
I realized right then that if I were holed up in my house while a cold-blooded terrorist roamed my neighborhood, I wouldn't want to be a sitting duck with only a deadbolt lock between me and an armed intruder. There are not enough police and they cannot come to my rescue quickly enough. They carry guns to protect themselves, not me. I knew at that instant if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed up at my door while I was “sheltered-in-place” and aimed a gun at my head and only one of us would live, I could pull the trigger.
I’m shopping for guns this week. I've been told a 12-gauge shotgun is a good choice for home protection, but I’m open to suggestions.
(emphasis mine, Ol' Backwoods)
Get an AR-15. Oh, wait, they won't let you have one.
Still, I'm glad this lady and her family are going to be keeping a gun at home now. I believe liberals could be free men, if only they would wake up to reality, like this lady did.
UPDATE #11, 4/23: Now the Obama administration's mouthpieces are trying to say that the Rape of Watertown's Rights wasn't illegal, because it was all voluntary.
Right, sure it was voluntary, with the police waving around M4's in a populace of disarmed sheeple who have been taught since they were born to fear and hate guns. Also, since the public school system has made sure that the public, by and large, does not know its Constitutional rights, most people in Watertown just complied with the police's orders. Effectively, you have no rights if you don't know what they are.
The sheeple at the Atlantic can blather on about how the searches were "voluntary", but one thing about them certainly makes them unconstitutional: the police had no PROBABLE CAUSE that the terrorist was in any particular house. There was no "hot pursuit"; the terrorist wasn't seen going into a house. Heck, a RESIDENT to Watertown, not the jackbooted police, found Doogie the Terrorist in his boat!
Pieces like this one in the Atlantic are doing their best to convey: this is the new normal. You sheep can and will be ordered around by the Gestapo, err, the police, any time and any where they feel like it. And since the so-called "blue" states (really Communist Red) are by and large disarmed, they will do nothing about it.
Again, like I've been saying, THIS IS NOT THE REAL AMERICA.
Meanwhile, it took the BRITISH press to report the truth of what happened in Obamamerica:
UPDATE #10, 4/21: INCREDIBLE video of the warrantless violation of the rights of the people of Boston by the kind of standing armies our Founders feared and hated! The 3rd, 4th, and 5th Amendments are GONE, folks.
(sorry, YouTube has yanked the video. Big, big surprise, eh?)
This guy was bullied into letting the cops into his house. NO WARRANT. "Just your orders, right?" he said to the police. The Nuremberg defense? Really?
Jackbooted thugs doing their deeds against innocent citizens.
This is Boston, a police state.
An entire city on lockdown for ONE Muslim terrorist? No, I ain't kidding, friends. Have we had a declaration of martial law? Not that I have heard. Is this the Soviet Union? Nazi Germany? Israel, where your enemies are 9 miles away lobbing rockets at you?
No. This is America: 2013.
This is what happens when Americans become disarmed cowards, dependent on the police for their protection, despite numerous Supreme Court rulings that police do not have a duty to protect individuals.
This is an unconstitutional government occupation of an American city under pretense of protecting the citizenry. This is what tyranny looks like. I was told by someone who knows that over 1000 federal, state, and local cops participated in this illegal occupation. And the people of Boston just laid down like sheep.
Behold, the lily-livered descendants of Captain John Parker and his citizen army, letting the jack-booted thugs invade their homes and imprison them there.
Jack-booted thug searching house-to-house,
with no warrant in hand.
The entire city of Boston was put on lockdown Friday morning by the Massachusetts governor as police searched for the second of two [Muslim] men believed to have been involved in the marathon bombings earlier this week.
Gov. Deval Patrick said people should shelter in place as authorities engaged in a “massive manhunt” – an extraordinary order that affected nearly one million people.
'Lockdown'? ('Lockdown', a prison term, nice.) For one guy? Isn't ANYBODY in the whole City of Boston ARMED except the police? Apparently not.
ORDER? Who the hell has the right to 'order' Americans to do such a thing? There's been no warrant from a judge!
KCRG (local TV): Cops: Boston Must Shelter In Place Amid Hunt for Terrorist
'MUST'? Really? I don't think so. There's been no declaration of martial law, and this ain't a bird flu pandemic. There's been no formal suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Do people even know what that means anymore? Looks to me like people are being detained-- in their homes! -- and where are the arrest documents? Where are the warrants, even?
Col. Timothy Alben of the Massachusetts State Police said Friday afternoon that officers would go street to street as the manhunt for the bombing suspect continues. Gov. Deval Patrick urged residents to continue staying indoors.
...
Twenty-six-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NY'-ev) was killed
1 MILLION people hiding from
Doogie Howser the Terrorist?
overnight. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar (JOH'-kahr) is on the loose.
Who can pronounce Dzokhar? Let's call him "Doogie the Terrorist."
One 19-year-old Muslim terrorist is 'on the loose'? "Oh, dear." What ninnies.
What do they think, he has enough firepower to destroy one million people? He ain't got a nuke, people. He can only carry so much explosive. Sixty pounds of C4 (which he probably doesn't have) would only destroy a city block. And they tell 1 MILLION people to hide because of one guy who is carrying explosives? Stunning.
Nearly a million residents in the city of Boston and many surrounding communities were asked to "shelter in place" Friday as police continued a massive manhunt for the second of two suspects of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick requested that everyone in the area stay inside and only open their door to police officers showing proper identification. Commuter bus, rail, taxi and subway services were suspended. Businesses were asked to stay closed until further notice.
"This is a serious situation," Patrick said at a media briefing in Watertown early Friday. "We're taking it seriously."
Yeah, it's serious, all right, Patrick, you statist tyrant. You are infringing on Bostonians' 4th Amendment right to be served a warrant, the right of habeas corpus when detained, their Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate, the Supreme-Court-established right to free travel, and a host of other rights, ALL BECAUSE ONE TERRORIST IS ON THE LOOSE.
One. Freaking. Teenage. Terrorist! I can't emphasize that enough! And the 1 million disarmed lemmings in Boston just go along with it! And BUSINESSES are going along with this, too. Who is going to pay for their lost revenue? Johnny Jihad? Yeah, right.
The Massachusetts Founders like Captain John Parker must be rolling in their
Cpt John Parker didn't
'shelter in place'.
graves today, so great would be their grief at learning what castrated wienies their descendants have become. Instead of blubbering to the police about armed foreign invaders, or hiding in their homes like a bunch of cowards, on this very day in history, April 19, 1775, the people of Massachusetts 238 years ago today took ACTION.
The Massachusetts Patriots of 1775 put down a whole army of foreign interlopers that were trying to disarm them and terrorize them into submitting. The least of their privates would have shot this snot-nosed Muslim punk in the head, at significant yardage, with a paper-patched 60-caliber musket ball, and had his rifle reloaded before the punk could have put his backpack down.
According to the Appleseed group of the Revolutionary War Veterans' Association (RWVA, which Ol' Backwoods supports with my dollars, attendance, and passion), there were at least three engagements of foreign armed and dangerous enemies in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. All of them were met by ordinary Americans. Today, Boston goes into lockdown, hiding from a one foreign invader. How far we have fallen.
On April 19th, 1775, the British farmers, shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors, and craftsmen then living in the Colonies chose to face one of the the world's most feared and best equipped Army in a dispute over their rights and privileges as Englishmen.
And now, just a few miles away from Lexington Green, 1 million people, many of them descendants of Capt. John Parker and other Patriots that repelled the gun-grabbing British, 1 million diarmed Bostonians are hiding in their homes, because of ONE MUSLIM TERRORIST.
The Massachusetts Founders must be rolling in their graves.
UPDATE #2, 4/19: Yeah, they caught the guy. (Even though he tried to eat his own gun and now can't talk.) Now, I suppose the City of Boston is just supposed to forget the rape of the people's rights, let the whole thing slip back down the memory hole, and just go back to their lives as serfs. No doubt, they will.
I won't. This ain't how we do things in America. I'll go further: Massachusetts is no longer American.
UPDATE #3, 4/19: Bob Owens lets us know, the Boston Ineptitude Express just keeps rolling:
It was a homeowner that discovered signs of the suspect in her yard, a yard that had already been “cleared” in the botched police sweep operation. Without her recognition that something was amiss, it is likely the search would have dragged through another night and into another day.
Finally after a barrage of gunfire and untold number of flash-bangs and 20 hours of a city frozen by fear, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev finally chose to surrender on his own terms.
So, the standing army violating every right of the people wasn't necessary to capture the guy, and they missed him anyway? Some lady tipped them off? Big, big, surprise.
UPDATE #4, 4/19: I read a comment on MarketTicker:
... Gestapo tactics for the Boston PD (in full battle gear) to bang on someone's door at 4:00 am and order the family out their house scaring the children to death.
Is this guy telling the truth? Given the pictures above, is there ANY chance he isn't? This is NOT America, folks.
UPDATE #5, 4/20:
Yahoo!/AP Reports that business was massively impacted by this little Stormtroopen outing.
The economic impact of the Boston Marathon bomb suspect manhunt could run into the billions of dollars, according to one expert, as a million city residents were stuck at home, stores were shuttered and public transit ground to a halt.
Boston businesses were advised to remain closed, city employees were told to stay home or remain in place at work, vehicular traffic was limited and travel into the city via Amtrak and discount bus lines was suspended.
As a result, food, supplies and even the gasoline required for the city to get back to business wouldn't make it into Boston for the duration of the lockdown, said Michael Barrett, former director of strategy for the White House Homeland Security Council. "Every city has three days of fresh food on average," Barrett told “Big Data Download.” "There's only so much excess capacity in the supply chains.”
The Boston Marathon bombing will also have a ripple effect on the city's economy going forward, he said. Increased security at public events of any size will require additional local and state police forces, Barrett said, and that overtime can grow expensive.
(bold mine)
Are you reading this? This KNEW that the city's supply chain would not withstand a disruption like that, yet they went full Gestapo anyway. Every prepper knows that supply chains for basic necessities have been optimized to the point where there is virtually no local storage of anything; stuff is stored in giant distribution warehouses out in the hinterlands, and even there, there isn't much extra to buffer against a disruption in the source. So, what would happen if a cities supplies of food and gasoline were suddenly and massively interrupted? I think Boston (and the Feds running the operation) just found out.
I believe this was a full-scale test of martial law, and that Obama and his handlers and their minions are SALIVATING to try this on a bigger scale. This is not America, folks.
UPDATE #6, 4/20: This photo is making the rounds on Facebook, with the comment, "One of the less publicized impressions from yesterday's stand-off. A family with young children in Watertown was out of milk during the lock down ..."
Die nette Sturmtrooper bringt mik zu den Kindern!
Americans, this is Soviet-Union-Level propaganda.
This is an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the cops in the eyes of the public after the awful rape of civil liberties that occurred in Watertown yesterday.
They were dragging families out of their beds in the middle of the night, scaring kids to death with their jackboots trampling Americans' civil liberties.
And now, we're just supposed to go, "Awwwwww" because the nice policeman is bringing milk to the wittle kids?" Well, nuts to that.
Michael Cohen, a former speechwriter for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, said authorities reacted too strongly.
“I just think it’s insane what’s going on here,” Cohen said. “I understand the need to be cautious and tell people to be cautious, but to tell people to stay inside because one guy is loose is just crazy.”
“If there was some serial killer on the loose, no one would suggest that we do a lockdown of a whole city,” said Cohen, now a fellow at the Century Foundation. “To me, it just plays on our outsized fears of terrorism. … Part of it is just cover your ass business by public officials.”
(bold mine)
UPDATE #8, 4/20: lots and lots of pictures from the imprisonment of the City of Boston at SHTFPlan. Just keep scrolling! Below are a few of the best ones (copied to my server so I don't take his bandwidth).
Stay in your disarmed homes, sheeple!
All this for Doogie Howser the 19-year-old Muslim terrorist?
Or are they practicing to 'pacify' a city near you?
'Military police'? I guess Posse Comitatus really is dead.
But but but I thought Obama said "Weapons of War" don't belong on our streets!"
UPDATE #9, 4/21: More revelations: illegal confiscation of guns. From Karl Denninger at Market Ticker:
There was no "hot pursuit" and thus no argument available to them allowing searches of private property without consent or a warrant.
Not only did they search without a warrant there were multiple reports through the day of seizure of firearms, among other things.
The Constitutional Rights of an entire town, some 30,000 residents, were wantonly and outrageously violated yesterday, yet not one media outlet is focusing there.
More and more, this is looking like a dress rehearsal for national martial law.
To use another metaphor, a new maker shop may be rising from the ashes of TechShop. That is all I will say for now. Yes, I am in the middle of it. Yes, I
[Sean's] Take: In any decent society, this Orwellian-named monstrosity would be grounds for impeachment, tarring and feathering, and running the sponsors out of town on a rail. It surprises me that in this day and age we still have people who feel they can be openly hostile to our rights as citizens.
Section 1. Repeals all of the recently passed Improved Castle Bill. It also repeals universal reciprocity of handgun permits. ...
Section 2. This returns us to the bad old days when you had to prove you reasonably feared that the person breaking into your home intended to kill you before you could use deadly force to repel him.
This is actually worse than the original pre-Castle law.
Section 3. This bans leaving a firearm where a person under 18 can access it. This leaves responsible teens without any means to defend themselves. This means that this 14 year old would have been unable to defend himself and his sister. ... Section 5. Requires victims of a lost or stolen firearm to report it within 48 hours or get charged with a crime. Section 6. Requires that anyone seeking a Pistol Purchase Permit have liability insurance. ... Section 9. Requires a background check before transfer of a firearm. This has all of the bad parts of Chuck Shumer’s excrable private sale ban. It also makes the transferer explicitly liable for anything illegal that the receiver does with the firearm.
This section requires gun owners to have $100,000 in liability coverage that covers both accidents and “willful acts.”
And if your gun is stolen, your insurance has to cover it until you report it stolen. So if your gun gets stolen, and the thief uses it to kill someone before you get home that day to notice, you’re on the hook for damages.
This section also bans magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. What a bunch of wimps. At least they could have shown the sort of stupid courage the rest of the bill shows and gone for 10 or less.
Magazines sold in NC have to have a date of manufacture on them.
...
My recommendation: OPPOSE
I plan to be calling my state reps on this one. Bloomberg's tentacles have reached into the the Old North State, and I plan to help cut them off.
WASHINGTON -- Democrats helped Senate Republicans defeat major reforms to reduce gun violence Wednesday, including bans on certain assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
An amendment, put forth by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), to re-establish a federal ban on certain assault weapons was defeated by a vote of 40-60. A near-united Republican conference voted against the measure, with just one GOP senator, Mark Kirk (Ill.), voting in its favor.
Fifteen Democrats voted no on an assault weapons ban: Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Udall (Colo.), Tom Udall (N.M.), and Mark Warner (Va.). Sen. Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, also voted against the ban.
A separate amendment introduced by Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to limit the size of magazines to 10 rounds failed with a vote of 46-54. Kirk was again the only Republican to vote for the measure.
God is good.
Now, on to the next fight.
UPDATE: Obama's reaction. (Sorry, this was too funny not to post)
