The Final RIP

Squeakie, my third and last remaining kitty, has been returned to her maker.  She began to grow a tumor on her back last year and she was too frail to remove it.  Now, she awaits me in my Heavenly mansion along with Sockies and Hedi.

Squeak

Squeak slept most of her life... when she wasn't eating or engineering a "Squeak Attack" on Socks or Hedi.

Yes, that's a "Lion cut".  A mane,and a poof on the end of her tail.  So adorable.

And this was just too cute.  She was actually asleep with her head stuck between the pillows.

Petulant Political Propagandist Dupnik Finally Shuts Up

The Petulant Leftwing Political Propagandist Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County has finally shut the hell up.  Or has he?  I bet he hasn't.  I bet he has just put a stop to all actual facts being discussed and his political pontificating will continue.  This essentially means that nothing will come out of the Pima County Sheriffs office except through Dupniks pie hole which, as we have all seen for over a week now, is pure propaganda.

From HumanEvents

What’s the “controversy” between the County Attorney’s office and Sheriff Buford T. Dupnik? There are no official details yet, but it’s not hard to imagine a roomful of prosecutors watching Dupnik shoot the breeze with media outlets he likes, about media outlets he hates, and screaming in frustration. Every defense attorney goes to sleep at night dreaming of a loudmouth official who uses global press coverage to float his pet theories about who might really be responsible for the crime. If Jared Loughner accepts a little coaching from his defense team, prosecutors will be thinking about tossing the ends of their neckties into the ceiling fans by the end of this trial.

In a development that absolutely infuriates the Left, targets of the Tucson blood libel have been responding to the scurrilous accusations against them. Dupnik made a point of selecting one Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, of West Palm Beach, Florida, as one of those targets. According to complaints Dupnik made to the Washington Post, a tidal wave of Limbaugh listeners have been calling him to suggest he give up his career in media criticism and get back to something resembling law enforcement. This might have contributed to the sense of frustration over at the County Attorney’s office.

He's mad because he's been vigorously criticized.  This is the typical response of leftists - if they don't like what you are saying, they want to silence you.  Well, over my dead body Sheriff Dumbass.  You can ignore us all you want, but you're way past your sell-by date

Tucson, you need to get rid of this idiot.

From KGUN9

"Until further notice, due to a controversy between the Sheriff's Department and the County Attorney's office, no further information reference the January 8, 2011 shooting will be released."

...

The word "controversy" contained in the statement would seem to imply some sort of disagreement or discord between the Sheriff's Department and LaWall's office. But the statement did not elaborate about the nature of the controversy. When contacted by KGUN9 News, LaWall's office declined to comment.

...

Kastigar (Pima Count Sherrif Bureau Chief) has said recently that the security tapes from the morning of the shooting are crystal clear and show exactly what happened and in what order.

Well, that's it then.  They don't want us to know what is crystal clear, i guess.  Well, that's ok Dupnik, the FBI has desribed the surveillance video themselves.

From KVOA

Loughner entered Safeway and headed to the restroom. At some point, putting in ear plugs.

"He had the frame of mind to protect his hearing before he went and shot 20 people and to me that's very telling," said Pima County Sheriff's Office bureau chief Rick Kastigar.

He watched the surveillance video that captured the deadly shooting.

"He very deliberately with purpose walks up to a figure that is on the very edge of the frame of the video and fires one shot. You can see the little wisps of hair of that person," he said.

That person was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

In an animation the shooter turns to Ron Barber and hits him in the shoulder.

Judge John Roll is standing next to him and pushes him to the ground.

Dupnik Whines and Pontificates

Listen to Pima County, Arizona Sheriff Dupnik blather on about how the evil Republicans wanted to give "tax cuts to the rich" and then whine about the reaction to his stupidity (article here).  It's all despicable but listen to him whine and then pontificate at 1 minute in.  Apparently, the shooting is all about Ethel Kennedy who has to "go through this" again when it happens to someone else and it brings back painful memories.  So, that's why the rest of us should give up all our weapons.  Well, screw you Dupnik.  You can pry my weapons from my cold dead fingers.

He gets calls from Kennedys and all over the country in support and vile messages and threats from those who disagree with him.  Nothing reasonable in opposition.  Sure, Dupnik.  I called Sunday after the shooting and said "As the sheriff, a law enforcement official, you are out of line".  That's so vile.

Donnie Deusch and Al Sharpton lie about Arizona's 18 year old MLK Holiday

Yes, I said lie.  Arizona has an MLK day and has had since 1992.  Talk about blood libel!



I took the following screen cap at approximately 2:15pm MST today on the Arizona state government website.  I can personally attest that everything is closed - banks, schools, state offices, county offices, city offices, and post offices.

Praising Arizona

From Big Journalism.  Nothing to add.  Read it all.  Go over there and add your voice.

Praising Arizona

Posted by Stephen Kruiser Jan 13th 2011 at 9:00 am in Huffington Post, Mainstream Media, New York Times, media bias

For the past nine months, the great state of Arizona has been the subject of withering media attacks by an insulated chattering class whose lack of perspective may one day be studied in graduate psychology programs (because journalism school will be indistinguishable from clown school by then). The horrific attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by a lone, obviously deeply disturbed gunman has opened the state and my hometown of Tucson up to more irresponsible derision from the echo-chamber MSM.

Note to HuffPo and the New York Times: one psycho does not a culture make.

I won’t even bother linking to the various hit pieces in the above-mentioned publications, they’re so prevalent right now one doesn’t have to search hard to find them.

Let us begin, rather, with the notion of a “culture” in Arizona, which implies some sort of static population that’s developed its ideals over time. The state had 1,775,399 residents in 1970. The most recent census puts that figure at around 6.4 million. That kind of growth is a bit too rapid to attribute to the friskiness and fertility of the natives. The fact is that Arizona is a melting pot within a melting pot, quickly adding people from all over the United States for the past forty years. People have been flocking there for the weather and the jobs, by the way, not to join a militia. If anyone wants to attribute certain attitudes to “the people of Arizona” those same attitudes should be applied nationally, as most of the state’s population has streamed in from elsewhere.

My next point is purely anecdotal but important for context. A lot is being said about the availability of guns in Arizona. My grandfather owned a gun store. I got my first real rifle when I was six (a Savage bolt-action .22). I grew up around a lot of guns, as did almost all my friends. To this day, we all remain remarkably free of homicides and accidental shootings.

I mention that because I get the sense when reading anti-gun articles that those writing them assume gun owners default to grabbing a weapon for conflict resolution. Most probably wouldn’t admit that but the implication is there.

The simple truth is that Arizona has always been home to people who own guns legally and don’t go on shooting sprees. The tendency by anti-gun people to assume that possibility is always lurking is not only irresponsible, but also unsupported by facts.

The same media that wants you to think Arizona is ready for OK Corral v. 2.0 were only too eager to point out during the SB1070 debate that violent crime rates have been dropping there.

So, remember, when the Left is talking about illegal immigration, Arizona is a safe place. As for the rest of the time, all hell is breaking loose. (Particularly ridiculous in this HuffPo piece is this contention: : “Arizona may not be uniquely conservative, but it has become far more so in recent years.” Both Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva survived close elections in a year that didn’t exactly favor incumbent House Democrats.)

The debate over SB1070 is far too complex to revisit here but it was responsible for kicking off the nationwide Arizona bashing. The range of idiocy from a group of people who either had never been to the state or spent very little time there was also too wide to deal with fully at the moment. The majority of the knee-jerk criticism sought to portray the legal citizens of Arizona as racist and anti-immigrant.

In truth, Arizonans, particularly in the two largest population centers, are tired of the decades-long fallout from the very real drug traffic that emanates from Mexico.

The Phoenix metropolitan area is a regional- and national-level transportation and distribution center for methamphetamine and marijuana and a regional distribution center for other illicit drugs, primarily cocaine and Mexican black tar heroin. The area’s transportation infrastructure facilitates the shipment of illicit drugs from Mexico to Phoenix for local distribution and transshipment to drug markets throughout the country,

The same DOJ publication noted a couple points long known by Tucson residents but completely ignored by critics intent on portraying them as a bunch of crazed rednecks who were manufacturing a problem out of whole cloth.

Drug production within Tucson is generally limited; most drugs are smuggled into the area from Mexico.

And …

In fact, GIITEM and the Arizona Counter Narcotics Alliance report an increased level of violence, particularly homicides, in Tucson that is attributed to increased drug trafficking activities and the rising number of gang members who operate in the area.

Per the Dept. of Justice, it would seem that there is a correlation between increased drug traffic and violent crime. And where is that traffic coming from? You got it.

This same piece notes that the porous border is indeed the problem. And that’s what residents of Southern Arizona have been saying all along, this really is about the dangerous people who have been availing themselves of an almost previously unmanned border, not a hatred for the people who have come across to work on farms.

While the violent crime rate may have gone down recently, it was doing so off the spikes mentioned in this 2007 report. Again … context.

This problem isn’t something that just sprung up out of the blue in the past few years. I lived a dozen or so blocks from the border in Douglas, AZ for a very brief time when I was a kid. I awoke one morning to find out some drug traffickers had been taken down in our front yard in the middle of the night.

SB1070 was simply a reaction by people who had grown too frustrated with a decades-long abandonment of responsibility by the federal government. Nothing more. No hidden bigotry. No crazy cowboys looking to go off on “brown skinned” people (can’t remember how many times I read that last summer).

Arizona faces the same economic problems that most other states have been facing in recent years. It also faces problems that are unique to it, such as how to accommodate the rapid population growth and deal with a drug traffic problem from Mexico that is far worse than in the other border states.

A problem it does not face, however, is the specter of a seething, hostile populace that’s going to have the streets flowing with blood any day now.

The people of Arizona are by and large good and deserve better than what they’ve gotten from the press, the president, the attorney general and others in the past nine months. The vile human being who killed all those people last Saturday is not representative of anything but his own wretched mental health circumstances.

The unhinged, uninformed demonization by the MSM out one side of its collective mouth while it’s calling for civility out the other is especially galling.

But, sadly, not terribly surprising.

And, the opposite from a victim who blames pretty much everyone except the shooter.

A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy.

“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW.

“Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina Taylor Green.

Fuller, a 63-year-old veteran, had campaigned for Giffords during her re-election and was at the supermarket for her “Congress on Your Corner” event.

Yeah, that’s right, that’swhat the second amendment is all about… hatred and murder and lunatics and anarchy. While I'm sorry Mr. Fuller was shot and I wish him a very speedy and full recovery, when he is recovered, I do hope he remains so angry at everyone and especially Arizona that he leaves the state.

Idiots Run Amok in AZ: Pima County Sheriff Dupnik and State Senator Linda Lopez

I have been listening to Pima County Sheriff Dupnik since yesterday insert his radical left wing ideology into every press conference and media interview that he has done since the shooting.  He is out of line.  Let him know by using the contract form here or by calling (520) 351-4700. 

Arizona State Senator Linda Lopez, before it was even possible for her to have a single fact in her brain, said ”the shooter is likely, from what I’ve heard, an Afghan vet.”  Let this left wing nut know how you feel too:

Phone Number: (602) 926-4089 or 1-800-352-8404

14 decapitated bodies found in Acapulco

We've all heard about the attack on Representative Giffords (D-AZ 8), her staff, and her constituents.  I specifically point out her constituents because there appears to be little focus on them and, from all reports the shooter specifically targeted them after shooting the Representative.  The 9 year old little girl who was murdered was one of 50 children born in the United States of America on September 11, 2001.

In other news, the grisly murders continue in Mexico. A dozen mayors across Mexico were murdered in 2010.

14 decapitated bodies found in Mexico resort city

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) - Police found the bodies of 15 slain men, 14 of them headless, on a street outside a shopping center in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco on Saturday.

The victims, all of whom appeared to be in their 20s, were discovered in an area not frequented by tourists.

Handwritten signs left with the bodies were signed by "El Chapo's People"—a reference to the Sinaloa cartel, headed by drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman—said Fernando Monreal Leyva, director of investigative police for Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located.

The narco-messages indicated the Sinaloa cartel killed them for trying to intrude on the gang's turf and extort residents.

Mexico's drug cartels have increasingly taken to beheading their victims in a grisly show of force, but Saturday's discovery was the largest single group of decapitation victims found in recent years.

In 2008, a group of 12 decapitated bodies were piled outside the Yucatan state capital of Merida. The same year, 9 headless men were discovered in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo.

Acapulco has been the site of fierce battles between drug gangs, and this weekend got off to a bloody start with 27 people killed there from Friday evening to early Saturday, Leyva said.

The dead included two police officers cut down on a main bayside avenue in front of tourists and locals; six people who were shot dead and stuffed in a taxi, their hands and feet bound; and four others elsewhere in the city.

"We are coordinating with federal forces and local police to reinforce security in Acapulco and investigating to try to establish the motive and perpetrators of these incidents," Monreal said.

At least 30,196 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against cartels in late 2006.

Also Saturday, authorities said a small-town mayor was found dead in northern Mexico.

Saul Vara Rivera, mayor of the municipality of Zaragoza, was reported missing by family members Wednesday, Coahuila state prosecutors said in a statement. His bullet-ridden body was discovered Friday in neighboring Nuevo Leon state.

There were no immediate arrests.

At least a dozen mayors were killed nationwide last year in acts of intimidation attributed to drug gangs.

Cartel Killing Clowns in Mexico

The cartels are now killing clowns.  No one is safe.

Clowns Killed in Alleged Drug Gang Hit in Mexico

(AFP) - Two street clowns were found dead in southeastern Mexico along with messages allegedly from a drug gang accusing them of working as army informers, their families said Tuesday.

Another 15 people were reported killed in the northern border state of Chihuahua overnight, including a woman who was beheaded, amid rampant drug violence across Mexico which killed more than 12,000 people last year alone.

The clowns were found in bright costumes and makeup on a roadside Sunday in the city of Villahermosa, bearing signs of torture and a message accusing them of being army informers, their families said.

The Tabasco state attorney general's office said they were found with a message attributing the crime to the Zetas drug gang, which is known to be active in the area.

Police meanwhile found a female head wrapped in a jacket in a park in the Chihuahua town of Jimenez, in the most gruesome of 15 murders uncovered overnight, the state attorney general's office said.

Eleven of the deaths occurred in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, which has Mexico's highest murder rate.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in violence related to the drug trade across Mexico since December 2006, when the government launched a major military offensive against organized crime.

AZ Senate Speaker Russell Pearce vs. arrogant CNN-ite

Unbelievable but typical.  Watch as Arizona Senate Speaker Russell Pearce explains to the arrogant CCN-ite who cannot refrain from expressing her disbelief and ignorance. (Trouble with the vid?  It's here.)