Monthly Archives: August 2011

The Husband recently started the State Sponsored Criminal Count, now I’m creating the ”It Can’t Happen Here” series.

“It can’t happen here” is a mantra everywhere.  Well, it can happen here and it does.  This series is about shootings and other criminal activities that people think, feel, or say “can’t happen here”.

The rules are short and sweet:

1. It needs to have someone stating, “I could never see that happening here” or something along those lines OR
2. Within a location such as a gun free zone i.e. a college campus.
3. Info needs to come from the news, be it internet, radio, TV or newspapers.

A form will be available to submit any incidences.  The submission form is available here.  Feel free to recommend additions or changes, I will take them into consideration.

The first addition to this series happened in Moscow, ID yesterday, August 22.  An ex-Professor at the University of Idaho shot and killed a U of I graduate student and then later shot himself.

I first heard about this via a friend on Facebook.  She is one of the nicest people in the world and recently new to the area.  I in no way use the following to demean her, but her post created the idea for the series.

Stuff can happen in Idaho, though not super often.  The last known shooting happened in 2007 where a cop was shot and killed in the line of duty. 

Other past “it can’t happen here” incidents in the Palouse area include a would be shooter on the Lewis-Clark State College campus in Lewiston, ID and Hate Crime at the WSU campus in Pullman, WA.

In both Moscow shooting cases, the shooters killed themselves, saving the taxpayers money.

Update Submission forms are here. Links are also to the right.

I forgot to mention it on Saturday. I was on VC last Friday. If you’ve never listened to VC you’re in for a treat. I might arrange with Alan to be on more often. I find when I listen to them live I’ve got a pile of comments, most usually because I found some obscure article that adds.

We covered the wide range of topics, from butt hurt blogs to being overcharged for guard rail replacement. Go take a listen in case you missed it. If you’re wondering about the Chat Down article, here it is.

Two separate incidents in the same town.  The first involved a man who suffered from schizophrenia.

For Fullerton, things began spiraling out of control on July 5, when Thomas got into a violent fight with police officers who were responding to reports that someone had been burglarizing cars at a downtown transit station. Thomas, who suffered severe head and neck injuries, was taken off life support on July 10.

The incident was caught on cellphone camera, along with other surveillance cameras.  Currently the city refuses to disclose the names of the individuals involved in the incident.  Interesting that, considering if someone is over the age of 18, they’ll throw that name out no matter how thin the evidence.  As usual they are protecting their own from the black eye they face for their actions.

The second involves a wrongful arrest.

Mam, 35, was accused of jumping on an officer’s back and choking him outside of a bar he and his friends had just left. His criminal attorney, David Borsari, said Mam was actually recording the arrest of his friend on his cell phone when the officer in question knocked the device out of his hand, and wrestled him to the ground where he was arrested.

Another bystander picked up Mam’s phone and captured Mam’s arrest — footage that proves he never attacked an officer, said Borsari.

The officers continued to lie until they were presented with the evidence proving them false.  At which point they claim it was a mistake and ask for a free pass.  This is by no means the first time an officer in the SSCC has attempted to frame an individual and have their life destroyed by the legal system.

There is a common saying, ”Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, Three or more is Enemy action.”  Well I don’t believe in coincidence, and there appears to be a definite pattern beginning to emerge, since you have other officers who assisted the primary officers in same crimes.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 35

Because the state has every right to beat someone to death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or arrest and charge someone on a lie to make them look better.

So Tam talked about her bad luck in having the date of her dentist appointment off in her head.  She’s not alone in having bad luck currently.  Our summer thus far hasn’t been too severe, been up in the 90’s yes, but no real long streaks.  This past weekend that changed.

Saturday the wife and I got home from flea market I dug in and started working on some projects I had for the weekend.  The wife while she was in her office noticed the A/C unit which is directly outside her window wasn’t sounding normal.  She decided that this fact wasn’t worth bugging me about.  At about 2000 hours Saturday night I heard the thermostat relay fire and the lights dimmed a bit more than normal.  I said that was interesting until about a minute later I heard it open and said, well that’s odd.  5 minutes after that I hear it close again and the lights dim.  At this point I ask what’s going on and she said the A/C unit was sounding funny.

When I went outside to look at the unit it was buzzing quite loudly.  Immediately the unit was shut off and I decided since it was the evening I’d let it sit over night and look into it tomorrow.  Sunday I did a cursory troubleshoot to no avail.  It definitely wasn’t the thermostat but was the AC unit itself.  I knew the most likely cause was the contactor or the start/run capacitor.

Tonight a buddy from work came over to help me disassemble the unit and trouble shoot it.  We verified the voltages running into the unit.  It actually started at the beginning, but it failed on the second attempt.  We check the contactor, looked fine, ohmed clear when closed so we turned our task to validating the cap.

We initially just started pulling off wires to check values.  The values being read didn’t make any sense as they were way too low.  So we decided to pull the cap figuring it was cause it was awkward or it had in fact failed. 

After we pulled it, we verified that our readings were correct and found the proper values it should be on the side.  Inspecting the cap though proved it had failed.

Notice that bulge in the lower part, that shouldn’t be there.  It indicates the dielectric has failed.  Hopefully this is the only issue with the AC, and there was no damage done to the compressor.  It figures with my luck though this would die at the single hottest weak of the year.  Last night and the night before it was easily dealt with cause it cooled off quickly, getting down into the 40’s.  At 2300 hours it was still 71 outside tonight.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a very hot day.  Blogging may be light because I don’t want to add the extra heat into the house until I can get the replacement cap in.

Other bad luck includes the fact The Minute Woman still hasn’t been able to find a job after the union thugs fired her for not wanting to join, the small leak I have in the I/O of my boat, or any of the other small issues I won’t bore you with.  I am reminded of a story one of my Scoutmaster’s, Paul Edwards, told.

A king asked his three wisest men into his chambers.  Upon arriving he asked them to do the following.

“Men, I would like you to bring me something that will make me happy when I am sad, and sad when I am happy.”

The wise men nodded in agreement and walked out of his chambers, a week later they returned.  The king asked, “So what have you brought me to complete your task?”

The men knelt down and presented him a ring.  The king looked at them puzzled and asked, “This is all you have created?”

They responded in the affirmative, at which point he inspected the wring and saw the following inscription, “This too shall pass.”

I took this evening to switch the commenting system to Disqus.  It appears that I got all the comments to export properly.  If you have any problems please let me know.  I made the change to help simplify the  work that I was doing in maintenance.  There were a bunch of modules that were linked together to take care of moderation, closing, notification, etc.  Switching to Disqus provides a single point of maintenance which I like.

So play with it, tell me what you guys think.  If you want me to roll back I can though it’s going to take some serious pushing to prove why the old method is better.

Update 08/22: So it appears I forgot to set the read permissions for the blocks used for Disqus.  I corrected this issue mid afternoon.  Thanks to those who notified me on twitter about the issue, as well as Linoge who mentioned it to the wife.  She forwarded it to me as a text at work and I corrected the issue immediately.  If you have any more issues, please let me know.

We’re learning more on why the U.S. Air Force raided a local gun store Friday. They say it wasn’t guns they were looking for.

The article goes on to state that they were investigating stolen military equipment.  If that in fact is the case, why didn’t the FBI conduct the raid based off the evidence provided by the Air Force.  Air Force Special Investigations is not civilian law enforcement, and has no business conducting operations within the civilian populace.

Do they need to recover the military property? Yes!  Does that give them the right to deploy military personal and have them lead a raid on a civilian establishment on civilian property?  No!

This is just another example of the creep of big brother throughout society.  It used to be doing something like that would land you into a world of hurt.  Guess the military is now just another branch of the civilian harassment corps.

Civilian Harassment Corps: Any government agency whose role or purpose allows the harassment, intimidation, or destruction of private citizens or their property.

Examples members of the Corps include: DHS, TSA, ATF, and the FBI.

In the small little hick town I live in, we don’t have problems like they do in DC.  The little town and a town wide flea-market and my buddy who lives down the street had his kids set up a lemonade stand in the front yard.

Earlier in the week I had informed him the timing was perfect since it coincided with Lemonade Freedom Day. 

Here was the sign put down the street from the stand.

Then about 10 feet before the stand was another one advertising just the lemonade and cookies.

I was hoping the local cop would swing by and buy some but I didn’t see him all day which makes me think he was working dispatch since all the college students were coming back into Pullman this weekend.  We did however have another sheriff and a convoy of oversized loads with a state patrol escort drive by.  In every case the officers waved at the kids.

The oversized loads surprised us and I didn’t get pictures of the escort, and I didn’t think to grab pictures of the officers waving as they went by.  Go figure.

The kids got decent traffic, however with the town being as small as it is, there were 4 other stands along the highway evidently. 

I had no doubt that our day was going to remain uneventful, but sadly I am by no means surprised that a bunch of bored jackboots with nothing better to do went and arrested children for selling lemonade.