SnarkyBytes

Diebold has confessed that it’s voting machines loose votes.

According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a “critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point” has been part of the software for ten years.

Paper ballots people.

There has to be an audit trail.

I officially declare that the fist bump is over.

From now on only posers and wannabes will use it.

UPDATE:  It’s been brought to my attention that I’m late on this pronouncement.   The fist bump stopped being cool years ago and in fact there is significant research that shows that it was never cool in the first place.

It’s one of those days.

Nothing to say, nothing going on, nothing to do but sit around and read.

Pretty good day.

I think this is a great idea.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing a work week of four, 10-hour days for federal employees.

In a letter, released this week, to the Office of Personnel Management, he asked the agency to “undertake comprehensive analysis of the transitioning to a 4-day work week for all possible federal employees and inform me by August 31, of any additional actions Congress would need to take to implement such a policy by the end of fiscal year 2008.”

I’ve worked that schedule before, and it’s not bad. The three day weekend is nice and commuting only four days a week saves money.

But why stop there? Will Rogers said, “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.” I’d like to carry that idea a little farther and see if we could get even less government than we pay for.

How about we just pay them to stay home and do nothing?

I fondly remember the days of the government shutdowns of the 80’s and 90’s. Weeks and weeks with no new regulations or new laws. Good times.

After Fayus Interruptus, we finally arrived home yesterday, a day late.

The cat said “Oh it’s you people again.” and rolled over in ignore mode.   I bought an automatic feeder a few weeks ago in anticipation of the trip and he’s in love.   It spits out food at 6:00 am each morning, and he no longer needs humans for anything.

Iz not needing hoomans now.

Today I’ll retrieve $1000 dog from the vet.   The vet we board with spoils him so he may not be any more excited to have the humans home than the cat was.

Waiting at Orlando International to see if my flight will get cancled again. So far most flights are leaving a little late, but leaving.

Eating a bacon BBQ burger at Chili’s while I wait.

That little black dot on the horizon is the Orlando International Airport control tower.  It looks like the clouds are about to touch it.  I’m on a flight this evening at 18:00.  We’ll see.

Hurricane, then a tropical storm, then maybe a hurricane again.

At this rate I’ll be stuck at the lovely Airport Holiday Inn Select tomorrow too.

I’m supposed to be flying to DFW this afternoon.

What do you think my chances are?

I may be spending another night in Orlando.

UPDATE:  All flights canceled from Orlando.   I’m at the Airport Holiday Inn. I’d post a view from the window, but it’s cloudy and raining and you can’t see anything.

Supposedly I’m on another flight tomorrow evening.

My wife with her Heller Kitty shirt at the Animal Kingdom.

Busy not being busy.

It’s actually a lot of very hard work to not be busy.

At least the way I do it is.

Did that make sense?

USA Today says U.S. District Judge upheld the ban on guns at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

“…U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob ruled Monday that allowing guns at the airport could cause “a serious threat to public safety and welfare.”

UPDATE: The judge ruled against the request for a preliminary injunction against the ban. The case is still going forward.

UPDATE: Sebastian has more.

UPDATE: Most MSM articles aren’t bothering to mention that the ruling today was only a rejection of the request for a preliminary injunction, and not a ruling upholding the law.

Yesterday was Bonnie’s birthday and I missed it. But sometimes late is better than never.

Happy birthday Squeaks!

It’s Chicago, the land of crooked politicians (but I repeat myself) and unarmed victims.

And Only Ones who demand free coffee and pastries.

Over the years, cops have ripped off drug dealers, shaken down drivers and pocketed mob bribes.

But Chicago Police Officer Barbara Nevers allegedly aimed lower.

Nevers, 55, was suspended for 15 months and ordered into counseling for allegedly using her gun and badge to demand free coffee and pastries from six Starbucks stores on the North Side between 2001 and 2004.

I wonder what the going sentence is for a non-only one who uses a gun to demand coffee and doughnuts from a Starbucks?

I bet it’s more than a 15 month suspension.

An update on the Prince George’s County drug raid story.

It’s become a farcical cliché that the only ones will raid the wrong house and kill your pets, then leave behind a mess to clean up with no apology.

When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.

After the raid, Prince George’s County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights’ mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered an hour earlier.

What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home in this small bedroom community near College Park.

And then the other shoe dropped:

This week Prince George’s police arrested two men for orchestrating a plot to deliver marijuana to the addresses of unsuspecting recipients — among them, Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic.

Oops.

And it’s from his supporters no less.

I read that sign as “Obama, Zero Sign Of Progress” and that’s the least offensive version I came up with.

The humor, it writes itself.

A tip of the hat to Instapundit

TSA weighs airport gun ban in unsecured areas.

The Transportation Security Administration may allow airports to ban firearms from terminals, parking lots, roads and other airport areas where many states currently allow passengers to carry lethal weapons.

Airport officials and lawmakers are watching closely as the TSA weighs a request by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to modify its security program to impose an airportwide ban on guns. It is the first such request to TSA from an airport.

“Any decisions we make that affect (Atlanta) could affect every other airport in the country,” TSA spokesman Christopher White said Thursday.

Federal law bars passengers from bringing weapons to or past airport checkpoints. But in many airports, state law allows passengers to carry guns and knives in unsecured areas such as a main terminal — often to airport officials’ dismay.

“I don’t really like the idea of people coming here with weapons and carrying them into terminals, but that’s their right as citizens of the state of Texas,” said Alan Black, public safety chief at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

So the TSA creates a huge, nationwide screwed up security theater system, then incrementally adds to it. First it was no more pocket knives and tools. Then it was no one past the check point without a boarding pass. Then you take your shoes off. Then it’s no liquids past the check point. (Exactly how do all those high priced water bottles get into the airport anyway?).

Not one of these steps has increased passenger safety, but we’re still stuck with them because some idiot at the TSA thought up a Hollywood movie plot.

I’d like to remind everyone that it wasn’t the box cutters that let the terrorists take over four airplanes on September 11th, 2001. It was a stupid policy that required pilots to do whatever the hijackers demanded.

Only two things have prevented a repeat of 9/11. Securing the flight deck doors, and taking the war to Afghanistan and Iraq. Everything the TSA has done is bullshit.

Now they want to ban guns outside the “secure zone”. Are they going to move the screening points to the airport doors? What about the parking lots? How will they know I have a gun in my truck? Will they search all the cars that enter the airport?

Where does the insanity stop?

How did we, as a society, get to this point?

Two boys playing with a toy rifle touched off lockdowns yesterday at Stone Ranch Elementary School and the 4S Ranch Boys & Girls Club.

The scare began at 12:37 p.m. when police received a call that two juveniles were shooting from the elementary school, on 4S Ranch Parkway, at people in a nearby park.

San Diego police officers, sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers swarmed the scene and surrounded the boys.

O Noes! Kids playing with guns, call the cops!

When authorities determined that the gun was an Airsoft rifle used in a combat-simulation game, they let the boys go, a sheriff’s sergeant said.

I played with toy guns all the time when I was a kid. Some of them were very realistic.

No one ever called the police when we were playing cops and robbers or war games. People would have laughed at the idea.

Where did we get the meme that if a kid is playing with a gun it’s likely enough to be real that we call the police. In reality it’s extremely unlikely that the gun junior is playing with is real.

The police, when called, show up with enough officers that it’s called a swarm?

Overkill anyone?

At least they didn’t confiscate their toys and take the kids to jail.

The thing is, more kids aren’t dying from firearms. I looked up the data on the CDC website, and injuries from firearms among ages 0 to 12 have fallen in real numbers since 1981 when the online data starts.

(I stopped at 12, because teenagers don’t play cops and robbers.)

So there’s even less of a reason to think that they gun junior is playing with is real.

So why the PSH over kids playing with toy guns?

Yet another reason to end the “War On Drugs”

An “Only One” shot an unarmed mother holding her baby during a drug raid.

A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.

The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.

Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child’s fingers had to be amputated.

But it gets worse:

Defense attorney Bill Kluge told jurors Monday that Chavalia should not be judged on what wasn’t known until after shooting, including the fact that Wilson did not have a gun or pose a threat.

So we have no idea that innocent people are often killed during drug raids? That raids are frequently carried out on innocent people or people that don’t pose a threat? Those facts aren’t known?

What rock has Defense attorney Bill Kluge been living under the past few years?

How many more innocent people are going to have to die at the hands of stormtroopers before we stop this police state nonsense?

Via The War On Guns