Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Tuesday 09-28-10

Open letter to Obama from Charlie Daniels
Mr. President,
I write this letter as a patriot, a taxpayer, a lifelong resident and as concerned citizen of what I consider to be the greatest nation ever known to man, the United States of America.
I am Caucasian, so let's get the racial aspect out of the way to start with. This letter has nothing to do with your race. I lived through the cruelty of Jim Crow and segregation and learned early on in my life that the color of my skin does not make me better or worse than any other man.
We all remember Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement about judging people, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and I believe that with all my heart.
I believe that America is an exceptional country. We have been liberator, benefactor and leader of the free world for centuries. America is an example of what can be achieved by free people living under the free enterprise system.
↓We have led the world in technology, industry, science and medicine for a long time.
Our capitalist system guarantees that those who explore new worlds and bring us new products and better techniques are amply rewarded for their efforts, and this is as it should be.
A person who is the first one to get there and the last one to leave, who burns the midnight oil and never gives up until they realize their goals, are a boon to humankind. They're the ones who discover new cures, start new industries and create jobs.
These people deserve to be rewarded for their hard work and for the products and services they bring to make life better for all mankind.
Mr. President, it is my personal opinion that you want to take the well-earned rewards of these people and give it to those who have done nothing to deserve them.
It's really redistribution of wealth, and it's nothing new. It's been tried many places before and it has miserably failed in every one of them.
It's called socialism.
Am I calling you a socialist? Yes, I am. I firmly believe that you are a socialist and a globalist, and that you think America should have a comeuppance and have our playing field leveled to match those of other countries not as industrious or as innovative as we are.
Mr. President, how can you support the building of a mosque in the very same area where Islamic radicals murdered so many Americans?
Just who's side are you on?
Am I accusing you of being a Muslim? No I'm not, but the jury is still out a little bit on that subject in my mind, because many times your sympathies seem to lean in that direction. You need to watch who you bow to Mr. President.
You have betrayed a whole generation of African-Americans who voted for you because they really believed all that junk about "hope and change," they really thought you were going to do something great and the only thing you've done is to make their jobs disappear and their health insurance go up.
You and your party have corrupted duly elected officials in an effort to get your legislative agenda passed. Remember the "Louisiana Purchase" and the "Cornhusker Kickback," and that's just a couple we know about, but you bought off a bunch of congressmen and senators, knowing that you were going against the will of the majority of Americans, because you think that you and your arrogant friends know more about what's good for America than the citizens your disastrous actions effect.
Am I accusing you of being an elitist? You bet.
I don't believe you take the Islamic threat to America nearly as seriously as you should. You use semantics like "Overseas Contingency Operation" and "Man Caused Disasters" to soften your rhetoric toward people who would like nothing better than decapitate the entire population of America.
And Mr. President, if you'd really like to know the kind of warriors who are fighting the "Overseas Contingency Operation," and you would like to really know about what kind of enemies they're fighting, you should read a book called Lone Survivor by a brave, young Navy Seal named Marcus Lutrell who went to hell and back for his country, and is still a dedicated patriot. I think you'd find it enlightening, Mr. President and after you finish it would you pass it on to Janet Napolitano? And by the way, tell her that my invitation to take her to Iraq and show her some "Man Caused Disasters" is still open.
Am I calling you naïve? Absolutely.
You seem to think that America has an endless supply of tax dollars for you to waste and give away, and the debt you've piled up could well bankrupt the greatest nation on earth.
Am I calling you a failure, Mr. President? With all due respect that's exactly what I'm doing.

—Charlie Daniels is an award-winning country musician. His latest album is called "Land That I Love"

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/charlie-da ... z10aX4Rpt5

Report questions biometric technologies in fighting crime
Television cop shows love "biometric" technologies — fingerprints, eye scans and so on — but a blue-ribbon panel report calls for caution on widespread use of biological identification.
Released by the National Research Council, the "Biometric Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities" report headed by HP Labs distinguished technologist Joseph Pato, concludes all biometric recognition technologies are "inherently fallible."

"A lot of things possible on a TV series just don't work that way in real life," says panel member Bob Blakley of Gartner, a computer security firm in Stamford, Conn. "While there are lots of good uses for biometric recognition, there are lots of ways to create systems that waste time, cost too much and don't work very well."

Fingerprints are the best-known example of biometric recognition markers — physical traits that can serve to identify people reliably, such as facial features, voice, signature and even walk.

"Biometric recognition has been applied to identification of criminals, patient tracking in medical informatics and the personalization of social services, among other things," notes the report, released Friday.

Federal agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are funding research in improved biometric screening, but the report cautions they're not doing basic research into whether the physical characteristics involved are truly reliable or how they change with aging, disease, stress or other factors. None look stable across all situations, the report says.

Deployment of biometric screening devices at airports, borders or elsewhere without understanding the biology or the population being screened will lead to long lines, false positives and missed opportunities to catch criminals or terrorists, the report says.

"No system is infallible. There is no silver bullet," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "We have to test our security strategies carefully, or there will be a lot of taxpayer money wasted on systems that disappoint us."

Brandon Mayfield, a 44-year-old attorney from Oregon, is an example of the problem. A partial fingerprint from the 2004 Madrid subway bombing that killed 191 people was said by the FBI to match Mayfield's, which led to his arrest.

A judge later found the fingerprint match was only a slight one and for the wrong finger, ordering Mayfield released. The FBI apologized for the arrest, and Mayfield won $2 million in damages.

The FBI's nationwide fingerprint system has generally worked very well, leading to the arrests of fugitives, the report says. "But the key message is that even a very accurate technology can yield bad results if it is turned to the wrong problem," Blakley says, such as using time-consuming technologies to screen large numbers of people.

For that reason, the report calls for open and independent testing of biometric screening technologies before they are placed into widespread use. Cultural factors such as how long people are willing to wait in line for screening, as much as raw accuracy, will determine whether a particular kind of biometric recognition system will work.

"Too many false positives, and guards will just stop believing in the system and let the wrong people through," Blakley says.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2010-09-27-biometrics27_ST_N.htm

83-year-old pulls semiautomatic handgun on would-be robber

CLEARWATER, Florida — Knocked to the ground by a would-be robber, 83-year-old Charles Place defended himself — by pulling a gun.

Clearwater Police said Place was in a restaurant parking lot Wednesday when a man grabbed him from behind and tried to take his wallet.

Place resisted and was knocked to the ground. Police said that's when Place pulled out a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

Authorities said Place pointed it at the man and ordered him to leave him alone.

The assailant, Bryan Treloar, ran and was followed by a witness. Police caught up with him and charged him with attempted strong arm robbery. He was being held on $10,000 bail.

Place, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, wound up with small cuts on his hand.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-senior-thwarts-robber-20100925,0,7201060.story

Makes you want to move there does not it?
Kennesaw, where everyone is armed by law

Dent ‘Wildman’ Myers, packing twin semi-automatic pistols
Kennesaw, Georgia, is Everytown, USA: a mixture of old wooden bungalows and cookie-cutter subdivisions, of seventh-­generation locals and Mexican immigrants. Its quaint, ­cobbled historic centre is lush, with low-hanging trees and chirping cicadas. The civil war museum tells the history of the local Confederate fight against the Yankees. At the suburban malls on a humid Saturday afternoon locals vie to park their SUVs as close as possible to the Target and Best Buy outlets, and queue for tables at Chuck E. Cheese’s and Applebee’s.

But this city, half an hour’s drive north of Atlanta, is unique: it is the only place in America where it is compulsory to own a gun. In 1982, Kennesaw City Council unanimously passed an ordinance requiring households to own at least one firearm with ammunition. The law states that its purpose is to “protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants”. Kennesaw’s ordinance was a heartfelt assertion of second amendment gun rights, a principled and legislative rebuttal to a law passed earlier that year in Morton Grove, ­Illinois, banning guns within the city limits.

“It was official, but we were protesting as much as anything,” recalls Fred Bentley, a lawyer, who was already 56 when he wrote the ordinance. Looking every part the southern charmer in a grey suit and spotless white shirt topped with a gingham bow tie, Bentley keeps a loaded .38 revolver by his bed and two double-barrel shotguns from his hunting days. Otherwise his guns are decorative – a Brown Bess ­revolutionary-era musket stands by the door of his office.

Kennesaw residents were outraged not only by Morton Grove’s assault on the second amendment of the Constitution – which gives all Americans the right to bear arms – but also by “the slobbering way that the press portrayed the law as taking a stand against ‘evil’ handguns,” says Robert Jones, the president of the Kennesaw Historical Society and the owner of a .357 Magnum handgun. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged Kennesaw’s law as unconstitutional, but the federal court let it stand, although the city did add a clause exempting conscientious objectors, criminals, the mentally disabled and people who could not afford a gun.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
In search of China’s top entrepreneurs - Sep-24Vogue’s earliest celebrity models - Sep-24Jones says: “In 1982 this was a rural community of about 5,000 people. The whole town was very conservative and about 95 per cent of people owned guns anyway, so it was a very symbolic law.” Indeed, the law contains no penalty for violation and no one has ever been prosecuted for not owning a gun. Local police estimate that only 50 per cent of households have a gun.

But almost 30 years after the law was passed, it is still in place and still popular, not least because Kennesaw’s crime rate has remained disproportionately low, even as the town’s population swelled from 5,000 in 1982 to almost 35,000 now. According to the latest FBI statistics, Kennesaw recorded 31 violent crimes – mainly robberies and aggravated assaults – during 2008. In other similar-sized local towns the figures were much higher – 127 in Dalton and 188 in Hinesville. For property crimes – largely burglaries and thefts – Kennesaw recorded 555 while Dalton had 1,124 and Hinesville 1,802.


Samantha Ellis, 26, a Kennesaw resident, with her lightweight Kimber Ultra Carry .45
“Firearms are involved in less than 2 per cent of the crime around here,” confirms Craig Graydon, a police lieutenant who has served in Kennesaw for 24 years. “If nothing else, [the firearms law] draws a lot of attention to the importance of crime prevention.” Though it will give liberals heartburn, Kennesaw’s gun policy works.

. . .

Every morning, 79-year-old Dent “Wildman” Myers, whose bushy beard tapers into a long grey dreadlock reaching below his navel, belts two loaded .45 semi-automatic pistols and four magazines of extra ammunition around his waist and heads to work. Myers, one of the strongest ­proponents of the gun law, owns Wildman’s Civil War Surplus, a Confederate-themed memorabilia shop that touts itself as “The Best Little War House in Kennesaw”. The stock includes books of “redneck poetry” and spent shells from the civil war, Third Reich-inspired rock CDs and bumper stickers reading “The United States is an Obamanation to the world”.

During the civil war, Kennesaw was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in the south and HQ of the Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The influence shows. “If them Yankees up north say you can’t have a gun,” says Myers in an exaggerated southern drawl, toothpick dangling from his mouth, “we southerners are going to say you gotta have one.” The slogan on his T-shirt declares: “It’s the law in Kennesaw.”

While Myers might be on the fringe, it’s difficult to find anyone in Kennesaw who strongly disagrees with the gun ownership law. Residents recall a TV repair shop owner who years ago tried to have the law overturned, but no one can remember his name or when he left town. There are, however, plenty of gun agnostics who choose not to own a gun.

“It’s not enforced, it’s strictly psychological,” says John Grimm, 78, who works part-time in the gift shop of Kennesaw’s museum. The shop sells magnets, patches and coffee mugs sporting the Confederate flag alongside Confederate soldier caps for children and replica Confederate pistols ($89) and rifles ($189). While not complying with the law, agnostics benefit from its presence and are happy for it to stay. Grimm, who doesn’t have a gun, tells me: “If someone is going to rob you, they don’t know if you have got a gun or not, so they’re going to go somewhere else.”


A T-shirt on display at Myers’s shop
The law may be anachronistic but, whether in Kennesaw or the wider area, guns are a touchstone issue. This is not just about gun rights, but about independence; it is about a desire to keep the government in check.

. . .

Nick DeMarco wasn’t even born when the law was introduced. But a love of guns is in his blood. “I grew up around guns, and I already have a .22 ready for my 10-week-old son,” says DeMarco, a 24-year-old with a round face and goatee beard, who describes gun ownership as “a ton of fun”.

As we talk, he pulls out his mobile phone to show me ­photos of his baby. “I’ll probably get him into BB guns [steel-pellet air guns] at three or four – I’ll get him a Red Ryder BB gun, that’s what I grew up with – and I’ll start taking him hunting with me too.” While many of his friends share his love of shooting, not everyone his age does. “A lot of kids are not getting into guns because they’re not being brought up that way. Some might believe in their right to bear arms and think that the government has too much control, but they might not exercise that right,” he says.


Young Marine Zachary Wessinger, 10, with his .22 rifle
DeMarco believes that the world beyond Kennesaw is a violent place and that gun ownership offers a solution. “In Alpharetta, [a nearby town] it’s ridiculous,” he says. “I saw these kids jumping on the top of this nice Audi. You can’t shoot them, of course, but you sure could scare them. The way the world is going, with all the violence and crime, if you don’t carry a gun, you’re more susceptible to being a victim.”

Eavesdropping on our conversation in the sports shop where DeMarco works is Alex Payne, a 38-year-old machinist who lives just outside Kennesaw. He has a cherubic face and long wavy hair, but he turns out to be anything but a hippy. He shows me the belt holding up his camouflage shorts – its brass buckle reads “Amendment II: The right to bear arms” – and proceeds to hold forth on why gun rights are so ­important to him.

“To me, owning a gun means you’re not just being an American, but that you’re upholding the Constitution. So when that right is being infringed, when someone tries to take it away, it’s like they are trying to take away your freedom of speech. Imagine if someone told you right now that you couldn’t take notes,” he said, pointing at my notebook.

Payne has just introduced his daughter to BB guns, he says, putting his arm around a blonde 10-year-old in a pink T-shirt. “It’s really fun,” she says. “She started this year and I hope to have him start soon too,” says Payne, pointing to his eight-year-old son.

When I ask how many guns he owns, he responds sharply: “That’s none of your business.” This secrecy is common in the town, and is part of a general wariness towards government. Payne says: “Our Founding Fathers thought it was important enough to make this the second amendment so that we could protect ourselves from invaders in our country. And they knew that citizens needed to be protected from being taken over by the government.”

These words, puzzling to outsiders, reflect deep-seated beliefs, stretching back to the American Revolution and reinforced (especially in the southern US) during the civil war. As Robert Jones says: “People in the US are much more in touch with their Founding Fathers in a way that is not true in England. How many English people sit around reminiscing about Oliver Cromwell or praising the Magna Carta? In Red America, people sit around talking about the Founding Fathers. They look at Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp, and say ‘Don’t tread on me.’”

Such sentiments have been charismatically personified over the past two years by Sarah Palin, darling of the conservative right and a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Palin, a self-proclaimed “mama grizzlie” who shoots moose and caribou for sport, has fiercely defended second amendment rights and fuelled the fear, bordering on hysteria, that they will be taken away.


A customer holds a semi-automatic rifle at a gun show outside Kennesaw, Georgia
During a speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in May, Palin said the only thing stopping President Obama from scrapping the Constitution’s right to bear arms was fear of a public backlash. “Don’t doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the second amendment,” she said, urging the 9,000 NRA members at the conference to “stop them in their tracks”. In her fight against Democrats and big government, she has even adopted a gun-themed slogan: “Don’t retreat. Reload!”

For many here, Palin embodies the spirit of independence and self-reliance they admire so much. She even hails from the frontier state of Alaska. Her words certainly strike a chord with Johnny Wilson, who doesn’t let the fact that he is legally blind stop him from shooting as a hobby. “I buy guns like other people buy golf clubs,” chuckles 58-year-old Wilson, who owns more than half-a-dozen handguns, including two Colts, a Glock 17 and a Smith & Wesson PPK/S.

“Sarah Palin is certainly someone who can bring the community together,” he says, buying ammunition with his son, Gedde, at Nick’s Guns and Range in a mall in Kennesaw. “Those liberals just scare me to death. Not to be redneck about it or anything, but those tree-huggers don’t see anything good in the outdoors, all they see is the killing and the guns.” Wilson has been stocking up on weapons and ammo out of fear that Democrats will retain control of the House and Senate after the November mid-term elections.

“Let’s just hope that in November the Republicans take back Congress because if those other guys get in for two more years, we’re in trouble,” he says. Although he admits the Obama administration has not signalled that it plans to tinker with gun rights – in fact, the president has barely even mentioned the hot-potato issue – Wilson believes in a secret plot to scrap the second amendment. “We just don’t know what those politicians are up to.”

. . .


Erik Fredricks of Nick’s Guns, with a Smith & Wesson
Nick’s Guns – with more than 300 weapons in stock, from tiny pink pistols to huge black assault rifles – has been doing brisk trade since Obama was elected. The store manager is Erik Fredricks, a skinny 37-year-old who wears a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver on his hip. “We were doing about three or three-and-a-half times our normal business from the day after the election right through to mid-April. It was ­absolute insanity. The shelves were going bare because the manufacturers couldn’t keep up with demand.

“A lot of it was a knee-jerk reaction because of the assault weapon ban in the early 1990s after President Clinton came in. A lot of people thought something like that was going to happen again,” he explains. “But over the past few years in general, there has been a huge influx of all sorts of shooters and a lot more people getting concealed carry permits and coming in for handguns.”

Fredricks has been at the shop for four years and tells me that during that time no one has bought a gun specifically to comply with the Kennesaw law. They just like to buy guns.

So what sort of handgun would he recommend for me, for self-defence? He gives me a very light $319 black Kel-Tec semi-automatic pistol, which fits into my hand. “But I tend to start women on a larger gun because it doesn’t recoil so much and is easy to handle,” he says, handing me a $700 Smith & Wesson revolver. It is much heavier and feels sturdier.

Perhaps sensing the liberal shiver going down my spine, he offers to give me a test drive. But the trainer is out and the firing range at the back of the shop is busy. I spot groups of women in purple earmuffs, and fathers and sons lining up in the 10 alleys to shoot bullets into posters of deranged zombies called Bob and Steve. I am relieved: while I am game to try shooting, I am afraid I might enjoy it.

“Guns are a huge part of American culture,” says Fredricks. “When America was a frontier country, you needed your gun to put food on the table. Whenever you hear Americans talking about guns, they talk about independence and self-­reliance. The second amendment is somewhat unique because it places the ultimate option for use of force in the hands of the citizen and not on the state.”


Danyell Teets at the range

Danyell Teets is not as ideological as her boss; she just likes to shoot for fun. In the shooting range at the back of Nick’s Guns, where the air is thick with gunpowder and concentration, Teets lines up her 9mm Sig P225 pistol and shoots into the target. Bang, bang, bang, all into the couple of circles closest to the bull’s eye. In tight jeans, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, Teets, 23, graduated as an elementary school teacher in December and has been working at Nick’s Guns while looking for a teaching position – something that could take a while in the current economic climate. “I’m always apprehensive about telling people, especially in the school system, that my other job is in a gun store,” she says.

Teets owns two guns – she was tired of her Sig weighing down her bag, so she bought a smaller .380 model. She ­generally keeps one of her guns with her or in her car, “unless I’m going to school”. She tells me, “I have never had to draw it, but I did have an awkward situation a few weeks ago when I was being followed home and I didn’t have my gun on me. I was really nervous. I would always rather be safe than sorry.”

She was brought up with guns: “My dad was in the Marine Corps so I was always around guns. When I was six or seven, he took me on a hunting safety course, and I’ve been shooting with him ever since. Now I don’t shoot as much as I used to because of this job. By closing time I’m done. But before I started working here, my boyfriend and I used to come down to the range every Sunday. That was our thing.”

Regardless of whether other towns adopt Kennesaw-style laws, the reassertion of gun rights in the Obama era, along with a Palin run for president in 2012, will ensure that the second amendment remains on the political agenda.

And here in the south a new generation of gun-owners is ready to continue the tradition. As Teets says: “I am always going to have a firearm. And I am going to teach my children – when I have them – to shoot. I was raised that way and I want my children to be raised that way.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5c1b6a72-c5eb-11df-b53e-00144feab49a.html

No comments:

Post a Comment