A Filmmaker, a Quantum Physicist and a Singer Go Into a Bar…

Maybe his plan will also involve smoking cigarettes

I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or shriek in pain.

David Lynch Foundation:

Filmmaker David Lynch will announce during a global webcast (www.DavidLynchFoundation.org) on Tuesday, May 1, at 12 noon (EDT), the David Lynch Foundation’s new plan to end school violence: Teach one million students around the world to meditate to transform schools from breeding grounds of stress and violence into centers of creativity and peace.

The David Lynch Foundation has already provided nearly $5 million to support in-school Transcendental Meditation programs for thousands of students in public and private schools in the United States and around the world to learn to meditate. (See www.StressFreeSchools.org.)

And who’s paying for this silliness? Right. Hold on to your wallet:

The National Institutes of Health has granted more than $24 million to study the benefits of the Transcendental Meditation technique for reducing high levels of stress and anxiety, improving brain functioning, and promoting cardiovascular health. Other published research shows the technique reduces depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and hypertension—while improving academic performance, creativity, intelligence, and ADD and other learning disorders.

Most ADD/ADHD is over-diagnosed to hawk Ritalin, so the NIH is figuring on curing the ADD you don’t have with the TM that won’t work.

Lynch will be joined by quantum physicist John Hagelin (What the bleep do we know?!, The Secret), and singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch (Hurdy Gurdy Man, Sunshine Superman, Mellow Yellow).

A filmmaker, a quantum physicist and a singer go into a bar…I’ve heard that one before.

Seriously, do you honestly think that transcendental meditation will matter to the Harrises, Klebolds and Chos of the world?

Wanted: Geldings for the Gelding Patrol

I’m not surprised that I’m reading a story like this.

Houston Chronicle:

The pay is tempting, but the mission is tough — helping to stop illegal immigrants from crossing a long, rugged and remote border.

But the border in question isn’t between the United States and Mexico or Canada. It’s in Iraq.

At a time when federal officials are stressing the need to beef up U.S. border security, the State Department has hired a firm to recruit veteran law officers who will serve as “mentors” and train Iraqis to guard their borders.

Obviously, Uncle Sam would want law enforcement agents who are used to trying to do a job in spite of impossible rules of engagement from politically correct superiors, to go to a place where they will be trying to do a similar job in spite of impossible rules of engagement from politically correct superiors.

If they make one tiny mistake, or do their jobs too well, they’ll be sharing prison cells with Ramos and Compean, or maybe with the Haditha Eight.

SCOTUS Sides With Chasing Cops

An 8-1 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court today states that fleeing criminals and not chasing cops are at fault for the damage caused by the chase.

I’ll Pass

AP:

WASHINGTON – Looking for a stately home or opulent office overseas? One in a posh neighborhood or overlooking an exotic capital? Maybe with a glorious or infamous past? The U.S. government may have a deal for you.

From Kinshasa to Katmandu, Bangkok to Bogota, U.S. embassies, ambassadorial residences and other diplomatic digs are up for sale as the State Department moves its employees to more secure locations, upgrades facilities and combines operations in multipurpose compounds.

Some 29 properties worth more than $205 million are now on the market in 21 countries, including a huge and historic embassy annex in the heart of London, large chancery buildings in Panama, Nicaragua and Nepal and homes fit for envoys extraordinary in Belize and Venezuela.

Caveat emptor. U.S. Embassies are a rich target for terrorists, and some of them might not know yet that some of these installations are no longer property of the U.S. State Department.

Granholm Pulls a Holden

She’s in her second term as Governor of Michigan, and I do not know if that state has term limits for its governor. But if she’s eligible to run for another term, she might want to heed the fact that when then-Missouri Governor Bob Holden (2001-5) pulled a similar stunt, it was one of the factors that caused him to lose to then-state auditor (and now U.S. Senator) Claire McCaskill in his own party’s primary.

RedState:

Looks like Jennifer Granholm didn’t read yesterday’s DetNews Op-Ed asking the governor to lead or get out of the way.

The DetNews and the FREEP are reporting this afternoon that she followed up on her threat to send nasty letters to public school supers telling them the big bad mean angry legislature isn’t giving her a $3 billion tax hike so she’s going to cut off their money and force them to close early.

“And Yet”

LA Daily News:

FIFTEEN years ago on April 26, 1992, widespread civil unrest erupted in Los Angeles, following the not-guilty verdict in the trial of the four white police officers accused of using excessive force in the arrest of a black motorist named Rodney King. What have we learned about race relations 15 years after the Los Angeles riots?

Today Los Angeles is more racially diverse than ever and certainly one of the most diverse U.S. cities. And yet all is not well. Inter-ethnic violence in today’s L.A. is centered upon the targeting of African-American residents by Latino street gangs operating with the goal of eradicating African-Americans from “Latino” spaces.

“And yet” all is not well? Cross out “yet” and substitute “therefore.”

Could There Possibly Be a Reason For This?

AP:

WASHINGTON – Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested, a federal study found.

Police were much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere, according to the Justice Department.

(snip)

_Blacks (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of blacks and Hispanics searched.

_Blacks (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.

Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But blacks (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.

Maybe this is because blacks and Hispanics that are pulled over are more likely than whites that are pulled over to engage in suspicious conduct, or have outstanding warrants, that would mean that they are more likely to get searched, patted down, arrested, and/or have police force used against them.

Was This a “Gun-Free Zone?”

KC Star:

Two people were shot to death and others injured this afternoon when a man began firing shots at the Ward Parkway Center.

Police were notified shortly before 4 p.m. that a man was firing shots at the center at 8600 Ward Parkway and that several people had been hit. Initial reports indicated that as many as four people may have been shot.

Shortly before the reported shootings at the shopping center, a Kansas City police officer was shot in the arm at the Valero station at 1331 E. Bannister Road as he was conducting a car check. As the officer walked up to the car the man inside fired multiple shots at him, hitting him once in the arm. He was not seriously injured.

The officer returned fire but the man was able to drive off in a maroon Oldsmobile. Police believe he is the man who drove to the Ward Parkway Center and began firing at people there.

This event barely qualifies as being classified as “Missouri.” The western boundary of this shopping center is State Line Road, which is itself the boundary between Missouri and Kansas for a long stretch south of downtown Kansas City.

UPDATE 4/30: The suspect is white. From the Dallas Morning News:

Target employee Caffie Bradshaw, 19, said she was in a break room with two other people when they heard shots. She said co-workers saw a white man with a rifle who was “spraying bullets.”

Also, John Lott confirms that Ward Parkway Center banned conceal-carry.

Billionaires and Pauper Multimillionaires

A man worth nine figures needs a man worth ten figures to pay off a five-figure political campaign debt. To think, the former has a lot of input on the budget process of the most populous state in the union.

Carol Mostly-Fraud Mugged in Chicagograd

Looks like her diverse egalitarian people’s paradise isn’t much of a paradise. The article mentions that a student from the University of Chicago and his friend came to her rescue. If both the student and his friend were white, and the mugger was black, you would know the poetic justice of that.

UPDATE 4/30:  From the Chicago Tribune:

University of Chicago students Zachary Trayes-Gibson and Rachel McFadden had passed Braun moments before the attack as they walked west on 56th Street to a party. They heard a scream and turned to see Braun on the ground, the man on top of her.

KTVI-Fox-2 this morning showed film of Mr. Trayes-Gibson and Miss McFadden being interviewed, both are white.  I infer from the location of Chicago and the fact that no MSM article has published a detailed description of the suspect to mean that the perp is black or Hispanic.

He’s Saying It. What About Us?

John McWhorter (above) wrote this, in the New York Sun:

One reason black America has reached this point is, ironically, the eclipse of open racism and segregation.

When all black people had to huddle together and make the best of the worst, there was no room for calisthenic acting up. When the community had to generate its self-respect from within, black boys looking black girls in the eye and calling them bitches for fun was unthinkable. A black teen jaywalking for the fun of showing that he could, might have been beaten by the police.

These days there is more room for acting out. All humans like acting out when they can. Poor and working class black teens are no exception, and thus they do.

But the reason these youngsters have elevated this attitude into an identity is because the civil rights movement freed blacks into an America that had just made the upturned middle finger into an icon of higher awareness.

In other words, Jim Crow was the “lid,” and the Great Society “lifted the lid.” I couldn’t agree more, but I’m wondering where all the white journalists and commentators are saying things like these.

Strangely enough, a white neo-con blog actually concurs with McWhorter’s arguments and takes them a step further.  Between these Uncle Toms and these all-of-a-sudden racially courageous “mainstream” conservatives, it seems as if the Council of Conservative Citizens wields a bigger stick than even we know.

Rams Draft White Players With First Two Picks

With their first- and second-round draft picks, the 13th and 52nd overall, in today’s NFL Draft, the St. Louis Rams bucked the affirmative action racial caste system, and chose two white players.  One of the men selected will play a position usually affirmative actioned for the black master race of “afaletes.”

The gentleman on the left is Adam Carriker, a defensive end from the University of Nebraska by way of Hastings, Nebraska. The Rams drafted him in the first round.

The gentleman on the right is Brian Leonard, the Rams’ second-round draftee, a fullback/running back, from Rutgers University (not a nappy-headed ho) by way of Gouvernour, New York. Caste Football has been really high on him for some time, and it looks like J.B. Cash will get his wish of a white FB/RB handling the ball on a regular basis.

You Won’t Read This Story Every Day

A box of condoms in a class about human sexuality at a Des Moines, Iowa junior college causes enough of a scare to invoke an evacuation of the premises.

One would think that, in our overindulgent culture, by the time a man or woman is old enough to attend junior college, that he or she would be used to these things.

What’s Worse? Breaking Reagan’s 11th Commandment, or Being Hypocritical About It?

Happy Gilmore questions the conservative chops of the top-tier Republicans for 2008. It’s time to throw some of those question marks right back at him.

MNEA Gets It Right, Then Wrong

P-D:

A Missouri legislator wants to make school districts pay for remedial courses their graduates are required to take at state universities.

The proposal by State Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, is among a raft of education measures from Republicans that have been attached to a bill to rate child-care centers. That bill has bipartisan support.

That bill is based on the curious assumption that the need for some students to take remedial classes in their first years of college (which leads to the more pertinent question of why colleges are accepting such students), is somehow the fault of the K-12 public school system.

The Missouri NEA has picked up on this:

“Achievement gaps come from a lot of sources,” said Otto Fajen, legislative director for the Missouri National Education Association. “It’s really inappropriate to lay all of the blame for this at the door of the public schools.”

I agree, but what Mr. Fajen does not realize is that the egalitarian ideology that the NEA promulgates will always lead some to consider the public schools to be “environmental” causes of the “achievement gap” (read: race).

The “achievement gap” does come from a lot of sources. Here’s the most important one:

However, the MNEA fumbles the ball:

Fajen cited studies that indicate other factors contribute to achievement gaps, including poverty, home environment and early-childhood reading opportunities.

How convenient of the head of the most important teachers’ union in the state to cite “home environment” as a cause but automatically dismiss “school environment.”

“Hope You Die, White Trash”

Two black students at Brighton High School in Boston are charged with witness intimidation and murder threats, after they threatened to kill the school’s 65-year old white baseball coach, as he was a witness against them for other crimes they were charged with.

As one can imply from the title and the link, the words “white trash” were used, but as of this moment, there is no push to add hate crime riders.

They aren’t very fond of their school’s baseball coach, but this won’t prevent MLB from wasting a lot of resources to get people like that to play professional baseball.

How Is This a Race Issue?

It was in him, and then it was in here

The teacher here did a really bad thing, and dismissal is not out of the question here. But there is no evidence (as far as I can see) that this was explicitly an issue of racial bigotry, and the fact that the teacher was white and the student was black, is not enough for me.

But it is enough for the NAACP.

KSDK-NBC-5:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A middle school teacher instructed an eighth grader to urinate in a bottle in class instead of allowing him go to the bathroom, the boy and his mother said Friday.

Thirty-one classmates heard Michael Patterson, 14, relieve himself into an empty Gatorade bottle in a corner, they said.

(snip)

The boy’s mother and the local chapter of the NAACP are demanding that the district fire the teacher at Charles M. Goethe Middle School if he does not resign. The boy is black, and Kelly Jacko, his mother, said the teacher is white.

If the NAACP didn’t get involved, I would have fired the teacher if I had the authority. But now that they are involved, I would keep her on, just to keep the NAACP from having a moral victory.

One Thing Leads to Another

Hip-hop dance competition at Pattonville High School last night begets an altercation, which leads to a shooting.

Raise your hands if you’re honestly surprised or shocked by this.  I’m not seeing any raised arms.

Doesn’t Anyone Find This a Little Uncouth?

Which way to the foot-washing basins?

WND:

The Kansas City International Airport has added several foot-washing basins in restrooms to accommodate a growing number of Muslim taxicab drivers who requested the facilities to prepare for daily Islamic prayer, WND has learned.

The move concerns airport police who worry about Middle Eastern men loitering inside the building. After 9/11, the airport beefed up its police force to help prevent terrorist attacks.

The only place where Kansas City is so important that international radical Islamic terrorist groups would consider it to be a target is in between the ears of Kansas City civic boosters. (The same could be said about St. Louis).

Still, Muslims and airports — it doesn’t pass the smell test. I think that recipe has been tried once before, and didn’t work out quite so well, for two cities that are honestly important on the world stage.

Our Diversity Is Our Strength

No fights among diverse gangs here, yet 

Kurds vs Hispanics in…

…Nashville.

Say What?

Mayor Francis Slay, doing his best President Bush “ambiguous malapropism” imitation, in his State of the City address delivered today at City Hall:

“I want to increase the number of chronically unemployed citizens who are prepared for the workplace.“

One could take this to mean that he wants more unemployed people in St. Louis.

To Be Fair, Really

Brian Ross, of The Blotter by ABC, notes that Confederate Memorial Days in the South are upon us. (Yes, Virginia, I know that St. Louis already had Confederate Memorial Day on April 22; I will get photos of it on the static webpage as soon as possible.)

While Ross (thankfully) interviews someone from the pro-South side, as well as the NAACP, here is the more pertinent question:

Will there ever be a blog post on The Blotter at the beginning of any given February, when Ross et al. interviews someone from a group that opposes black history month?

Scratch the Surface

New York Times via Modern Tribalist:

Statewide, 45 percent of Hispanic students and 47 percent of black students graduated on time in 2006, compared with 79 percent of white students. And while the on-time completion rate was 91 percent in the wealthiest school districts, it was only 45 percent in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers, the big cities other than New York.

It’s worse than advertised.  Black and Hispanic schools generally have weaker requirements to pass a class, so if curricula were fair, the on-time completion rate for blacks and Hispanics would be worse.

It Can’t Be “Genocide” If There’s No “Cide”

San Francisco Chronicle via Modern Tribalist:

The number of patients with gunshot wounds admitted to San Francisco General Hospital’s trauma center has more than doubled over the past five years — a sign of what the hospital’s chief of medicine calls a genocide on the city’s streets.

(snip)

The dramatic rise isn’t mirrored in the city’s homicide rate because fewer gunshot victims are dying thanks to advancements in medicine, a hospital official said.

Even if a gunshot always lead to a death, it still wouldn’t be genocide. Here’s why.

Meet Gitmo’s Newest Fish

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi who was AQ’s top operational planner in Afghanistan.

According to ABC, he’s at GITMO now, so just about every Senate Democrat is demanding that he gets a jury trial and an ACLU-approved public defender.

Only a Politician

In their attempts to clear up ambiguity and confusion over the legal status of 17-year old criminal suspects, the reforms passed by the Missouri General Assembly are going to make the law more ambiguous and confusing.

Feds Threaten to Throw Texas into the Briar Patch

If they don’t cough up their share for the NAFTA Superhighway.

The Score is 42 to 37

That is, among El Salvadorian Gangs in American states.

MS-13 has presences in 42 states, while the 18th Street Gang is only in 37 states.

C’mon, 18th Streeters. You gotta get moving, and make that cheap labor lobby proud, don’t ya know.

Mean Things Come In Small Packages

Orlando Sentinel:

LEESBURG – Meet tiny Dancer, a rust-colored, long-haired Chihuahua that may just be the world’s smallest dog, weighing 18 ounces and standing not much more than 4 inches tall.

Dancer’s owner, Jenny Gomes, said the diminutive Lake County canine may be on his way to being named the world’s smallest living dog by Guinness World Records.

And Dancer may have a legitimate claim to the title. The last smallest dog — measured by height — was Danka Kordak of Slovakia, which stood 5.4 inches high, according to Guinness officials.

If he’s the smallest dog, then he’s probably going to be the meanest. With dogs, it usually works out that way. Anybody ever own a Dachshund?

KTVI Denounces Black Crime

Charles Jaco does a Tony Blair and explicitly blames the toxic culture of young blacks as the source behind recent assaults by black thugs on (mostly white) police officers in St. Louis City. The occasion was tonight’s “Fox Files” on KTVI’s 9 PM newscast.

“The Jaco Report” this weekend on KTVI-Fox-2 (Saturday evening at 6:30 PM, pending a ballgame) will have an expanded version of this report. Set thy Tivos.

The problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.