For my father’s passing, four years on

DSC00495My father passed away on February 11th of 2009.

It was a Wednesday.

That previous night, my two brothers and my wife had visited him in the hospital.  I made a wrong assumption — that my father would be alive the next day.

I can clearly hear my wife whispering to me that night, before we left: “kiss your father.”

Like the bastard I am, I didn’t.

I thought he would, like the survivor he was, be around the next day.

I was wrong.

He passed away at 0330 hrs., early Wednesday morning, February 11th of 2009.

My brother received the call.  Then he called me.  Luckily, our eldest brother was already in town.

My wife wisely told me to kiss my Dad goodbye, and I didn’t.  And I will regret that small, seemingly insignificant act, for the rest of my damnable life.

It kills me, even now, four years later.  I still have my father’s things scattered in my office on the second floor of my cabin.  I haven’t moved them in four years.

There must be something wrong with me.

It still hurts.

BZ

 

 

STOP THE PRESSES! Donald Duck is a racist!

Donald Duck, RacistPut Chris Dorner on hold!  Put our $16 trillion dollar deficit on hold!  Put the loss of our freedoms on hold!  Kick all that aside!

Because, this just in: Donald Duck is a racist!

From the UKDailyMail:

Finally the (White) family (which is black) gave up and left, only to turn back and see Donald hugging the white children that had been waiting behind her.

A second family has come forward with claims that a Disneyland character ignored their children because of the color of their skin.

But here’s the best part of the story!

Attorney Dan Gilleon is now representing both families.

It’s time to sue Disneyland for the inactions of that evil, racist duck!

Ah, thank God there are attorneys; we’ll all rest better tonight.

BZ

 

 

DHS Purchases 21.6 Million More Rounds of Ammunition — WHY?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has engaged a contract to purchase an additional 21.6 MILLION rounds of small arms ammunition for the DHS Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (their auxiliary training point) in Artesia, New MexicoThe contract equates to 10 million rounds of 165-grain .40 caliber JHP, 10 million rounds of 115-grain 9mm JHP, and 1.6 million rounds of 9mm ball.

A DHS informant has already indicated that the United States is preparing for a massive amount of potential civil strife.

And further — lest you forget — the US DHS and ICE already secured a contract with ATK for half a BILLION small arms rounds in .40 caliber, April of 2012.

As I wrote:

Compare this to, for example, the war in Iraq. Where 5.5 million rounds per month were fired at its height. That equates to 66 million rounds per year in wartime. This then, further, equates to roughly seven years of war against US citizens at an “Iraq-type” expenditure.

Obama’s NDAA already exists. It is extant. And it doesn’t stand for the North Delaware Apartment Association. It stands for a diminishment of your civil liberties. It provides Mr Obama the power to detain Americans at will.

What is the further “logical extension”?

That is this: your federal government seems to be anticipating a MASSIVE shooting war against its own citizens.

I can feature no other reason for such a staggering purchase of handgun rounds by the federal government.

The bottom line is this: over the last 10 months, 1.625 BILLION rounds of ammunition have been ordered by DHS — your federal government.  Not state governments.  Not county governments.  Not city governments.

InfoWars indicates:

Such massive quantities of ammo purchases have stoked fears that the agency is preparing for some kind of domestic unrest. In 2011, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.

Further, and perhaps more pointedly for me:

A study funded by the Department of Homeland Security that was leaked last year characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

That, essentially, quantifies ME and the bulk of my readers as terrorists.  Plain and simple.  I don’t know how to otherwise express this.

Since that time, I’ve been doing some serious cogitation on the issue.  I’ve been attempting to “connect the dots,” so to speak.

The ammunition upon which the topic is predicated deals with small arms.  Primarily popular calibers with both civilian and non-military law enforcement — to the tune of 9mm and .40 cal.

Conspicuously absent in these stories are the categories of .223 / 5.56 — .308 / 7.62.  Also absent are the “older” small arms rounds of .38 caliber, .357, .44 and .45 caliber.  The large current sniper round of .50 caliber was also excluded.

So I began to think.  Damn me for that.

WHAT I CONCLUDED:

These massive orders have been heretofore unplaced by the federal government for “civilian consumption.”  With some insight:

As Rangemaster for my 2,000+ deputy Western Fornicalia department, I quickly found myself slightly impacted when ordering ammunition back in the early 2000s.  The federal government was, obviously, fighting on fronts that demanded 9mm and .223.  I rapidly discovered that ammunition manufacturers didn’t run simultaneous lines of, say, .45 and 9mm and .40 and .223 and .308; oh no.  They ran one strict line of .45 caliber.  Then they changed dies and brass and ran another line of 9mm.  And so on.  It defied description and logic but it was what it was.  The military was the priority.

Knowing the patterns of ammunition manufacturers — and taking into consideration the MASSIVE federal ammunition orders — I can submit a conclusion that, now, to me, should have been glaringly-obvious many months ago.  And that is this:

The federal government out-thought both the law enforcement and the civilian aspect of ammunition importance.

When you place a priority order, everything else gets kicked aside.

– Minor LE gets kicked aside;
– Civilian orders get kicked aside;

To what end?  An end that I submit we all should have guessed and didn’t:

When massive priority federal orderings get made, that diminishes the availability of ammunition for the civilian and — also — the civilian law enforcement venue.

Plain and simple.

Ammunition is hard to get and order for average Americans.  Imagine that.

What no one else is telling you: civilian law enforcement is also finding it difficult to locate and order its ammunition.  Imagine that.

The federal government killing two birds with one stone: stocking up for itself; reducing rounds available for civilian “terrorists.”

You tell me:

Where am I wrong here?

BZ

 

 

Small-molecule drug drives cancer cells to suicide

Finally, some good news these days?

From Nature.com:

Studies in mice show therapy is effective even in hard-to-treat brain tumours.

Cancer researchers have pinned down a molecule that can kick-start the body’s own tumour-destroying systems, triggering cell death in cancerous but not healthy tissue in mice.

The molecule, TIC10, activates the gene for a protein called TRAIL (tumour-necrosis-factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand), which has long been a target for cancer researchers looking for drugs that would avoid the debilitating effects of conventional therapies.

Can you imagine the ramifications if this becomes applicable to humans?

BZ