Warp Speed

Here’s hoping that your mail makes like Luke Skywalker and gets there in timely fashion. Otherwise, it will end up in the belly of Jabba the Hutt, or sucked into the Death Star.

Duff On Tap

In a promotional move for this summer’s upcoming Simpsons movie, several 7-11 outlets will convert to the fictional “Kwik-E-Mart” seen on “The Simpsons.”  The rouse will go so far as selling real-life imitations of the fictional items available there.  No telling if an Apu mascot will be serving you.

Hmmm, let’s think this thing through.

(1)  Is Duff Beer more like Budweiser or Miller?

(2)  Will there be Sanjaya Malakar promotional material behind the counter?

(3)  I wonder what the scanner would show as the price for a scanned-in baby Maggie.

(4)  Finally, I get to see Homer choking Bart in real life.

(5)  I think I’ll have Mrs. Krabapple and Principal Skinner apply for SLPS positions.  Meanwhile, Otto the bus driver would be perfect for School Board.

(6)  Will AmerenUE reciprocate for the time by having CEO Gary Rainwater legally changing his name to C. Montgomery Burns?

And finally:

(7)  How will QT respond?  By theming their stores with Beavis and Butt-Head?

What Team Wears Orange?

Former Major League pitcher Ugueth Urbina will be spending the next decade-and-a-half in one of Hugo Chavez’s egalitarian collective resorts for a conviction of attempted murder.

He should take heart:  His country’s President is doing everything he can to make his own country almost prison-like, with himself as the warden.

Bad Choice of Words

AP Headline:

Cover Of Final Harry Potter Book Unveiled

After Daniel Radcliffe’s last endeavor in the performing arts, I think the AP could have come up with a better word than “unveiled.”

Only Now

Is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) resigning from the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, after years of her funneling contracts to her husband’s firms.

Liberal Miami Tabloid Proves Tancredo Correct

It is a Third World country.

Miami New Times:

While West Coast gangs such as the Bloods and Crips have been making inroads in Miami, many of the recent gang-related killings in areas such as Miami Gardens and Little River have been traced to Haitian gangs. With names like Zoe Pound, One Way, Uptown, Sesame Street, E-Unit, and Zombie Boys, they are ubiquitous in some neighborhoods. Their signs are subtle but clear — tattoos and gang colors on bandanas, headbands, and wristbands.

The context here is a long expose of black gang violence in Miami.

Though I disagree with the subheadline of this article: “An epidemic of payback murder is wiping out a generation of inner-city youth.”

The violence epidemic could get many times worse, and it won’t make a dent in the black population. The reason is that it’s almost always men and boys killing other men and boys.

Someone very wise I met a long time ago, and someone who still has me on his e-mail list, had the best analogy for this sort of thing.

Imagine that there are two worlds. One world has one man and nine women. The other world has one woman and nine men. Each year, the first world could gain nine new people, while the second world could gain only one new person. The more female a population is, the more likely it is to grow.

If this epidemic of black gang violence got far worse and involved exclusively girls and women being killed, then it would start making a dent in the black population. But it’s not. Several thousand fewer boys and men being killed every year in a population of 40 million is hardly the essence of “wiping out a generation.”

Incidentally, the New Times chain of tabloids also owns the Riverfront Times.

Serial Rapist Attacks Teenage Daughters of Single Parents in Chandler, Arizona

You’ll notice that the English version is on the flip side

From KSDK-NBC-5.

Better Yet, Bill

AP:

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said the United States needs to do more to prevent a “nuclear 9-11,” a threat that he argues has been neglected because the Bush administration has been consumed with Iraq.

The New Mexico governor said the United States must lead an effort to secure nuclear materials in Russia and dangerous areas of the world so they can’t get into terrorists’ hands. “If al-Qaida obtained nuclear weapons, they would not hesitate to use them with the same ruthlessness that allowed them to fly airplanes filled with people into buildings,” he said in a speech to the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

My memory might be fooling me, but wasn’t Bill Richardson the Energy Secretary when many energy and nuclear secrets under his Department’s supervision were getting “stolen” mysteriously by people and principalities that turned out to be big Clinton and Democrat Party money machines?

Beyond my conjecture, I have an idea that might help in the circumstance that Gov. Richardson’s plans to keep AQ from getting nuclear weapons fails. The idea is to keep AQ boogies armed with nuclear material out of the USA, to keep them from penetrating our borders.

Being as he is the governor of a state that is on an international border, one would hope that he has already thought of this idea. Forbid that he actually opposes this way of thinking.

Movin’ On Up

Illinois is moving its Presidential primaries to the February 5 “Giga Tuesday.”  Diane Meyer thinks it’s to help BHO, but as HRC is a Chicagograd native, it might help her more than him.

I’m Wondering

AP:

CLEARWATER, Fla. —

Lawrence Roach agreed to pay alimony to the woman he divorced, not the man she became after a sex change, his lawyers argued in an effort to end the payments.  But the ex-wife’s attorneys argued Tuesday that the operation doesn’t alter the agreement.

Less than a week after commissioners in nearby Largo drew national attention by firing the city manager after he announced he was a transsexual, lawyers for Roach and his ex-wife grappled in another transsexual rights case that delves into relatively uncharted legal territory.

Question:  If a Mr. and Mrs. divorce, and it’s the Mr. that decides to change horses in midstream, and he was under an order to pay alimony, does this mean he can stop paying?

Playing Politics With Cockfighting

The Blotter by ABC:

A Republican senator is holding up a popular bipartisan bill to crack down on cockfighting that was expected to pass easily in the Senate yesterday, drawing outrage from his congressional colleagues.

The hold, placed by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., “testifies to the powers of these shadowy forces that allow this illegal and barbaric scandal to continue,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., one of the bill’s co-sponsors in the House.

Earlier this week Republicans and Democrats in the House passed the bill by a landslide margin of 368 to 39 votes.

Cockfighting is now illegal in every state but Louisiana, and the peripheries of Louisiana are now havens for cockfighting spectacles that attract people from surrounding states. The Federal legislation that Coburn is holding up would make interstate transportation of animals for fighting a Federal crime.

Coburn’s state’s governor, Brad Henry, pictured above, (someone who I have tagged as a possible running mate for Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she win the nomination), should also face questions about his playing politics with anti-cockfighting legislation. Part of the reason behind his upset victory over Steve Largent in 2002 was that Largent came out for the cockfighting ban, while Henry was deliberately mum on it, i.e. he communicated the message that he would not sign such a ban.

In the end, Henry won, based partially on the votes of pro-cockfighting forces, but he signed the ban anyway.

If HRC, who will probably vote for the ban, does pick Henry, then I suppose we could say that the chickens have come home to roost.

Nice Dreadlocks, Rock Head

Photo accompanying the Post-Dispatch story today on the first day of testimony in the trial of Kevin “Rock Head” Johnson:

He looks way older than his 21 years, and looks to have aged dramatically since we were last given photos of him. And what’s up with the dreadlocks? My theory is that he’s trying to make himself look more like Mumia Abu-Jamal, as if he knows that there are operatives on the outside trying to turn him into a Mumia-like caricature.

Four Children of El Salvadorian Arrivals Found Dead In Maryland

These two girls, and their two younger siblings, as well as their father, were found dead in a Frederick, Maryland townhouse.  Authorities are still searching for the mother, who was in the USA legally, and think their search might go international.

Hanging On My Doorknob

And placed there at about the same time our regular mail came today, were two ads rolled together.

One, in yellow, was for a neighborhood Lutheran church and their Easter services. The other, in magenta, was for a liquor store, that is one-quarter of a mile away from the church.

Quality Students a Prerequisite For Quality Education

French:

St. Louis University High School recently made news by adding to its number of students that have received perfect scores on the ACT. According to the Post-Dispatch, in the past three years, eight SLUH students have received perfect 36′s on their college entrance exams.

While the all-boys high school remains one of the top in the state academically, it is also making gains in its reputation as one of the most expensive. The St. Louis Business Journal notes in its latest issue that SLUH is raising its tuition next year to an eye-popping $10,500 a year — that’s over $40,000 for a high school education!

By comparison, the University of Missouri’s 2006-2007 tuition is $7,308 per semester. And Columbia College in Chicago’s annual tuition is just $16,328.

In the near future, will St. Louis parents be forced to pay near-college tuition rates for a quality high school education for their kids?

No, they won’t, because SLUH has admissions standards.  Therefore, they have a quality student body, which is why it is perceived as a “good school.”  However, if all of Vashon, Beaumont, Roosevelt and Sumner transferred to SLUH, it wouldn’t be such a good school for much longer.

Mexico Tries Gun Buyback Program

Keeping in mind that virtually all firearm possession in Mexico is illegal, turning in a machine gun or other high-caliber weapons will get you a free computer, and turning in a handgun or something similar will get you an XBox 360.

Therefore, this program is communicating the implicit message to Mexicans that firearms laws don’t matter, and in fact, one can be rewarded for violating Mexican weapons laws.  About the only kind of people that are punished for violating Mexican gun laws are Americans who accidentally cross the border with guns in tow.

If the suckers bite, then they’ll just get more guns off the black market where they got the ones they turned in, and everyone will be back at square one.  As it is, I can ill imagine that the Mexican dope-running gang bangers will turn in their machine guns for a computer.

If any guns are turned it, it will probably be similar to what happened in St. Louis, when Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr. tried the same trick here in 1993.  What happened was that a bunch of old white widows exchanged their late husband’s hunting rifles for the gift certificates, and a bunch of middle-aged white men gave away their broken, non-functioning and inoperable guns for the same (the program explicitly allowed for turning in non-functioning guns).

Driving While Black

If NASCAR is going to become more diverse, it can’t include him

Thanks to D.F. for finding this story. The video clip is better than the story.

BBC:

US comedian Eddie Griffin has wrecked a rare Ferrari worth $1.5m (£760,000) that belonged to the producer of his new film – and escaped unscathed.

He was practising for a charity race to promote his forthcoming film Redline when he smashed into a concrete barrier just outside Los Angeles.

(snip)

Only 400 Ferrari Enzos have ever been produced, all between 2002 and 2004.

Can’t Win For Losing

Black teachers and educators, who usually say that black students need black teachers, are now complaining when their “expertise” is overused.

The G-Men Are Investigating Floyd Irons

For reasons unknown.  But since the FBI is involved, it must be a Federal object.  I’m betting that it has something to do with financial scandals during his tenure as Vashon basketball coach; perhaps the FBI thinks that he was laundering, absconding with, mishandling or misappropriating monies trusted to him by the school and the district by virtue of his position, or monies given to him through shoe deals and endorsement contracts.

The other big scandal involving Irons is a 15-year old young man that was assassinated in north St. Louis city last year, who just happened to complain about Mr. Irons’s conduct.  However, that’s not a Federal object, so I doubt that the FBI is concerned about it.