Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tulzscha's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
10:45 pm	Also, don't use a Taser for self-defense. It won't work. Or, rather, it will -- for as long as the juice is on. Two seconds after that, not so much. See also, other famous incidents: Sergeant Koon then shot King with a Taser. King groaned; momentarily fell to the ground; then stood back up. Koon fired the Taser again, knocking King to the ground. King then stood up and charged in the direction of Officer Laurence Powell. (Comment on this)
10:09 pm	The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve a surcharge on city water customers to help cover the cost of a $22 million court-ordered rebate to water customers. Wait, I'll figure that one out, any minute now... It's actually a little worse than you'd think -- there are lawyer fees to recoup!. Hee. Definitely shoulda gone to law school. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, January 12th, 2009
12:15 am	Helping fabricate minor aluminum patches for the F86-D/L Sabre Dog at MAPS appears to be a manner in which I'll be spending some Saturdays. More on "our" plane here. At some point in its display life, numerous inspection panels had been lost from the aircraft. As a 'quick fix' by persons unknown, these panels were skinned-over with pop-rivetted sheet aluminium. Though this has undoubtedly stopped a great deal of nesting birds from making the aircraft their home, it does also mean that the MAPS crew has had to remove these patches and new panels are gradually being made for the aircraft. Oy, yes! They also slapped patches over any sort of damaged areas, riveted shut any moving parts (speedbrakes!), etc, etc. And this is the easy one, heh. When it's done, we'll work on the Voodoo, or the Thud, or... We're getting an F-84 (it's been donated, just have to get the right confluence of crane, trucks, and weather to bring it in)... heh. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 7th, 2008
9:14 pm	'Hektor, argue me no agreements. I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement but forever these hold feelings of hate for each other, so there can be no love between you and me, nor shall there be oaths between us, but one or the other must fall ... ~Iliad, 22.261-266 (Comment on this)
Friday, October 31st, 2008
10:12 pm	Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn’t understand this, or doesn’t want voters to understand it. I think he understands it quite well. He was, after all, raised on Chicago politics. And quite clearly, he wants all the guns -- literally and figuratively. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 24th, 2008
12:19 am	Oh, and illegal, unethical, unscrupulous, and intentional donations. As the Powerline reader has noted, if "John Galt" of "Ayn Rand Lane" attempts a contribution at the McCain campaign, it gets rejected. Which is just as well. If the Republican candidate's website were intentionally set up to facilitate fraudulent donations, it would be on the front page of The New York Times. But, as it's King Barack the Spreader, we can rest assured the crack investigative units will be too preoccupied with Governor Palin's shoes over the next two weeks. How many millions did He raise? And how much of it is fraudulent and illegal? I'm just curious. Update: worse and worse. I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code). Used the following information and it was accepted... First name: Fake Last Name: Donor Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point City: Fraudulent ... And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!! I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard). There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: "Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data", and then: "We have found errors in the information that you have submitted. Please review the information below and try again." Not even the security code? That's so bogus it hurts. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
12:12 am	Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse: House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Are you fecking kidding me? Seriously? They're just hacked off that people have *ANY* of their own money left. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:02 am	"The 1960s dream of 'make love, not war' does not work for Bonobos. Even though bonobo societies are characterized by promiscuity and a lack of male dominance the males still hunt and kill other primate species." What, the hippies were lying to us? NO. FUCKING. WAY. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
1:52 am	During the recent financial crisis we got a taste of Obama's leadership style in crisis: do nothing and hope he can shift the blame to somebody else. Nearly all of Obama's appeal requires his supporters to take on faith that he will do things he has never done. But on the question of whether Obama will ever take a meaningful stand against corruption or waste in his own party or stand up to vested interests and ideological extremists on his own side, we have a certain answer: he has bypassed too many opportunities to do so already. To the contrary, Obama is so thoroughly marinated in extremism and corruption that it would be nearly impossibe to extricate himself and still have a meaningful identity left. Just in case you had doubts, he has teeny bit of research to back that up. And some comment gems, too: That was some defense of Obama, Steve. You'd think that given the volume of these posts, you guys would have some defense of him by now, rather than the tacit admission that he is, in fact, up to his eyeballs in trading favors with machine politicians and left-wing extremists. Instead we get more of these cargo-cult responses, designed to ape the format while completely missing the actual substance. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
6:11 pm	"... letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was "...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail." Somebody knew it was coming, and tried to do something. Someone's still going to get the blame for it. I love the strategy in all this mess. Suck in money and contributions from pet cash cow. (You can sleep with their executives, too -- that's OK) Refuse and combat all regulation/oversight of said cash cow. Blame opponent when cash cow implodes, taking a chunk of the system with it -- tar him with being a "deregulator" and that "deregulation" caused the mess (without citing examples -- because if you did, you'd have to blame all the Democrats who voted for GLBA, as well). Get away with it. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
5:48 pm	This is somewhat revealing, I think: "In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum of understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration was in place," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States. 1: Befuddle and delay someone else's hard-won achievements 2: Later, step in to take credit for the fruits of someone else's hard work, without earning it. (look, in my first month in office I fixed the Iraq War! georgebush epicfail!) 3: Hog the glory, with media complicity. Almost worked. Goddam truth had to slip out. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 10th, 2008
10:41 pm	He’s denying straw men—but not denying any of the factual claims that have been made. And he cleared up nothing at all. This is the same tactic he used to defend and excuse his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, until Wright’s embarrassing public statements forced Obama to renounce him. (Comment on this)
10:26 pm	Obama to McCain: Why won’t you say it to my face? Which one? You've got a different one for everybody. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:09 am	But these new so-called "rights" are about the government -- who the Founders saw as the enemy -- giving us things: food, health care, education... And when we have a right to be given stuff that previously we had to work for, then there is no reason -- none -- to go and work for them. The goody bag has no bottom, except bankruptcy and ruin. Does that ring a little familiar these days? Because isn't the danger here that if you're offered something for nothing... you'll take it? Only it's not something for nothing. "Free" health-care costs us something precious, and no less precious for being invisible. Because there's a word for someone who has their food, housing and care provided for them... for people who owe their existence to someone else. And that word is "slaves." Oh, but you can't use the word "slave" -- that's racist. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 6th, 2008
12:06 am	He knows alcohol wasn't a factor, and that it's hurtful to to the man's family to claim that it was. Yet he still continues to "allege" that the guy was drunk. Note the "alledgedly" gives him "shameless weasel" cover -- can't shame the shameless, though. "I never pursued it..." Yeah, because if you had, the obvious truth would have outed. Also, he waited until after the guy died (1999) to start telling the "drank his lunch" story. Because, legally, you can't slander a dead man. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
8:19 pm	We’ve posted five articles now about serious mistakes and/or outright lies in Joe Biden’s performance last night—but if you read what the mainstream media have written about the debate, you won’t find a single one of these falsehoods. Because the media controls the narrative, and the media has a favorite, that's why. Lies? I wouldn't call them "lies", because that implies a degree of knowledge that he doesn't posess. There's nothing deliberate about what he does -- he's a senator, his only stock in trade is words. Empty, meaningless, hope-you-don't-notice-my-vapidity words. Ref the earlier Hezbollah link -- he legitimately doesn't know. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
7:36 pm	In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. . . . Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Nor France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody. Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about. ~Michael Totten (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
9:21 pm	Everything you thought you sort of, maybe, might want to know about the "bailout". As proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, the putative "$700 billion" "bailout" is actually neither: It will neither cost that much, nor will it bail out those financial institutions that wrote bad loans for people they knew were not likely to be able to pay them off. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
7:33 pm	Got results from my six-month scans... No cancers, yay! You can't get rid of me that easily! Mwaha. And this is the bit where health insurance pays for itself as, um, the scans cost $5075. Of which I pay nothing. Whee. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
10:25 pm	I know it's an onld post, but this is one of the coolest things ever. Recall Acme, that enigmatic mail order purveyor of catapults and jet skates to cartoon coyotes? Pikers, compared to Turbonique. ... When the driver threw the switch, the supercharger unit would receive liquid oxygen for ignition, and then it was fed a rocket fuel named Thermolene -Turbonique's trade name for N-propyl nitrate. The exhaust thrust from combustion would spin a turbine impeller up to 100,000 RPM, ramming the engine with such intense boost that it essentially turned it into a giant two-stroke. Turbonique dyno-tested an AP unit on new Chevy 409 in 1963, increasing horsepower from a stock 405 to 835 -- backing up their advertised guarantee to "double your horsepower" -- although it came with a recommendation not to run the unit for more than 5 minutes and only with forged cranks, pistons and connecting rods... And yes, the rocket-powered supercharger was the wimpiest of their products... If the bit about rocket-powered go-karts doesn't at least make you chuckle, well, perhaps insanity and cars aren't your favorite things :P P.S. the "Tobacco King" is a sweet ride. Even without the rocket. P.P.S. Yes, when you light off the Rocket Drag Axle it shits fire. What did you expect would happen? (Comment on this)