Gibson raided

Re: Gibson raided

John Roberts said:
Hammer I am guessing you didn't read the link I provided... the authorities also found 2000' of detonating cord, a few dozen blasting caps, and the complaint mentions fuel oil in combination (similar to OK City, and a well known DIY bomb) however they don't list fuel oil in the seized property.

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Entrapment is a risk of over aggressive enforcement, while I don't think I could be so easily influenced. Some pea brained are influenced by what they read on the Internet. :-)

If you want to be critical of enforcement, how about those agents who sold guns, planning to track them, and then lost them... WTF were they thinking? They weren't apparently.

JR
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JR,

I did read the link. this is my point... Farmers have used det cord, blasting caps, dynamite, ANFO, etc.. in the past for clearing stumps and boulders from their fields. I find it strange that they didn't incinerate the fuel oil mix and the remainder of the Ammonium Nitrate immediately...as they do in other cases. And, as you've pointed out.... the list of seized materials does not list the ANFO, that he supposedly made.... why?.... this shows more of an intent to do harm that just possessing fertilizer and other materials.

Entrapment happens all of the time...and in all forms of alledged Criminal activity.....there has been numerous cases highlighted on Nightline, 20/20, 60 minutes, etc.... remember the American Arab guy that was renditioned to the middle east for months of torture...only to have been released after it was found they had the wrong guy?

And, aggressive Law Enforcement Officers are everywhere... Last week, Some Supervisor from the NYPD maced/pepper sprayed some peaceful protestors outside of a bank (they were Women and Retired Catholic Nuns) It was funny that the Supervisor had inadvertantly sprayed his own officers. Or, the Cops that beat a homeless man to death, or the Cops on trial in New Orleans, for killing innocent citizens after Katrina, or the Cops that are busted EVERY day...just read the papers.

It's not Foreign or even disgruntled American Terrorists that concern me...it's the over-zealous Cops, Government Agents, and the Laws they break that concern me.

If this guy was planning a terrorist act.....he should be punished, but, I only hope he gets a fair trial.

Hammer
 
Re: Gibson raided

Here's the stupidest thing I've heard all day:

This morning (and last night) on the local intertube “news” was all kinds of "atta-boys"... and we finally "won one for the Gipper" concerning a $40,000,000.00 grant handed out to two of our local universities to develop bio-fuels from surplus wood products for light aircraft.

$40,000,000.00 for what do you say???!!! WTFO??? Is there some surplus of dumptruck loads of cash that need to be dumped off a cavernous cliff?

Pictures on the intertube of the "project" showed talking heads milling around prop driven (twin engine) pleasure aircrafts (Beech Bonanza type)… beaming a look of “man… this is gonna be really cool, I can tell it already”.

What wrong with this picture?

1) I was not of the impression there was some acute shortage of pleasure aircraft avgas. And if there is... we're talking pleasure aircrafts, not grain barges headed to Africa or Bangladesh. Seems to me that the minimum twin engine gas aircraft cost of membership into that club is $50K+. Yearly annuals, insurance, and whatever else is probably a minimum of $5K/yr. Operating costs for the occasional weekend warrior enthusiast of such pleasure crafts probably well exceeds a buck or two a mile. I suspect fuel costs, while probably significant, are probably not a make or break decision for such enthusiasts.

2) Avgas cost: I suspect Avgas probably rolls out of the discharge pipes right along with all the other fuels. I suspect there are no highway taxes involved with avgas. I suspect the possibly somewhat higher price at the pump for avgas is because of shelf life and special care and feeding costs, and point of delivery/convenience pricing. All of which would probably apply to the price of avgas regardless of it's source (dead dinosaur poop fertilized ferns or Ponderosa Pine bark).

3) What mountainous piles of waste tree bio-mass are they fixing to capitalize on? From what I've seen (and I live in the great Pacific Northwest)... when it comes to contemporary logging and processing of timber bio-products... it's pretty-much all used... to the point where a serious brewing problem is that there's not enough returning biomass to the soil with modern take all timber bio-products operations.

Ok... so somebody saw fit to dump $40,000,000.00 into a program where the need is extremely questionable, and the source is extremely questionable, and the science is questionable or worse (like been there, done that and it didn’t really work) and the pay-off is beyond questionable, and the justification for all of this is beyond madness… and this is the first I’ve heard of any public mandate to “somehow find an alternative source for pleasure craft avgas”… I have yet to hear how this ties into a solution for how to deal with the elephant standing in the middle of the room… other than that this grant should offer yet another avenue to alleviate us of the seemingly raging federal budget cash disposal problem. Inna previou life I worked as a busboy at a convention center where the problem was that the sink-er-ators (garbage disposals) didn't have the capacity to process the surplus lobster tails fast enough that needed to be cleared from the tables before dissert was served.

40 ma... ma... million! that's probably somewhere on the order of what any 10 of us have earned in 4 lifetimes. 40 ba... ba... billion... or ta... la-la-la trillion. eh? just rolls off the tongue. eh? Whatever happened to that jobs program where folks packed water up a hill to pour it in a hole that fed a waterfall that amused those below?

Maybe I'm missing something.
 
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Re: Gibson raided

W. Mark Hellinger said:
Here's the stupidest thing I've heard all day:


Ok... so somebody saw fit to dump $40,000,000.00 into a program where the need is extremely questionable, and the source is extremely questionable, and the science is questionable or worse (like been there, done that and it didn’t really work) and the pay-off is beyond questionable, and the justification for all of this is beyond madness

Maybe I'm missing something.
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Hello Mark,

Hmm....combine stupid idea with a truck-load of money, and you get: Political business as usual & padded pockets.

You're not missing a thing.

Hammer
 
Re: Gibson raided

Life is too short to catalog this kind of nonsense, which is the rule rather than the exception.

The problem is that apparently enough voters look upon this bringing home the pork as a "something for nothing" win, or at least getting some tax dollars back as a zero sum game, while it's never even zero sum on a good day. There's always shrinkage.

A pattern in this supposed investment in green jobs, is short term construction and photo opportunities. Building a new factory is very low on the list for any fledgling business... investing in new product R and D would almost be a good use of tax dollars, but if they had a good enough idea, they could get plenty of private money...

The solar industry is sucking wind, because all of the euro subsidies have dried up... Not to be a broken record but a sustainable business shouldn't need subsidies to prosper...

Did Steve Jobs need a government leg up to make apple I-control the world? No he took a good idea and executed well.

JR
 
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