Peter Downs and Donna Jones Got Something Right (For Once)

P-D:

The St. Louis Board of Education passed a resolution today asking surrounding school districts not to accept city students looking to transfer due to an upcoming state takeover of the troubled district.

(snip)

The resolutions passed with four of the five board members present in favor. Board member Veronica O’Brien abstained. Two board members, Bill Purdy and Flint Fowler, could not attend the special school board meeting.

Downs, Jones, Jackson and Wessling voted for this resolution.

Though they probably didn’t do it because they have seen the racial light.  They’re doing this because the mass of city students that will inevitably transfer to St. Louis County districts after accreditation is yanked will lead to financial insolvency of the SLPS, thanks to state law that requires the home school district  to pay the tuition and other costs relating to willing students that transfer out of such an unaccredited district.

We Have Met the Enemy

And he looks like this.

What war on terror?

What? No Knock on the Door from Federal Law Enforcement?

Here is a story from CNS News, that I have adapted into a fake story. The following block quote is the fake story.

(FNN) — Joe’s Gun Shop is being criticized after one of its employees was recorded encouraging a student – who was posing as a minor – to lie about his age and to obtain false identification papers and cards in order to purchase a handgun on apparently legal terms.

John Doe, a 21-year old senior at State University, visited the gun shop, posing as a 17-year old seeking to acquire a pistol. The visit was part of an investigation on the part of the State University chapter of Handgun Control, Inc., a nationally recognized gun control group formed by Sarah Brady.

State and Federal law requires that handguns cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 21.

In a covertly-filmed video betwen Mr. Doe and the unnamed employee of Joe’s Gun Shop, the staffer is heard to tell Doe: “If you’re 17, we can’t sell this piece to you. If you’re not, if you’re really 21, then I could.”

“Okay, but if I just say I’m 21, then it’s different?” Doe asks.

“You could say 21,” the staffer replies, later adding, “But you’ll have to show proof. I can call some people that can help you with that kind of thing. And I don’t know anything.”

Other parts of the video shows similar machinations on the part of employees and owners of other gun shops in the city.

One man relates that having himself defended himself against an armed robber when he was 17, 16 years ago, with a handgun he legally was not supposed to possess, the decision saved his life and his future educational and career ambitions. “If I had to do it again, I would get my hands on a gun any way I could,” said the man.

Doe told FNN that he wants to hold gun dealers accountable for how they handle potential illegal sales to minors, and that “handguns aren’t sold like blenders at Sears.”

“The public’s eyes need to be opened to the fact that they’re not really to be trusted in the way they handle minors who want to buy guns, or even in the way they counsel in a pro-gun way,” said Doe.

Joe Smith, Owner of Joe’s Gun Shop, criticized Mr. Doe’s tactics, but told FNN that his staff has been notified of store policy and Federal and State laws about selling to minors.

“We believe the individuals behind this are doing this not out of a motivation to protect teenagers, but in fact to smear Second Amendment rights,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Doe and his production assistants. “They went in with an objective to manipulate our staff, and they succeeded.”

Now, if this kind of sting happened in reality, Joe Smith wouldn’t be available to give an interview to the media, and whine about how his employees were entrapped. The BATF would have raided his gun shop, carted him and his employees off to jail, where they would sit forever without bond, and the gun shop would be boarded up.

Meanwhile, the media, far from giving sympathy to Mr. Smith and his “entrapment” contention, would be bloviating about a dangerous, conspiratorial gun merchant being removed from society, and how his actions (and presumably, we’re made to think, the actions of them all), are solely responsible for violent crime in urban centers.

Now, here’s the real CNS News article. After the first two paragraphs, you will get my point.

Four Hours of Power

Mugabe rations Zimbabwean residential electricity to four hours a day, between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, presumably so they can prepare the food that they don’t have.

It used to be that Zimbabweans had nearly 24 hours of electricity a day, and so much food that a lot of it was exported. I wonder what happened.

UPDATE 5:30 PM:  And this from Canada.com:

UNITED NATIONS — Zimbabwe is likely to win UN General Assembly approval to head a key UN body charged with promoting economic progress and environmental protection despite protests from some western countries and human rights organizations

They Got Some Crazy Little Women There

China is a bit far from 12th Street and Vine

More of those jobs that Americans won’t do:

Four Chinese nationals and one Chinese-American (i.e. those morally and intellectually superior Orientals that America just can’t get by without) are charged with Mann Act violations for their part in transporting Chinese women to the Kansas City Metropolitan Area for prostitution rings that used Johnson County, Kan. “massage parlors” as fronts.

White Man is NBA MVP, Again

It’s true.  And a native Kraut, no less.

Counting Steve Nash’s NBA MVP awards the previous two seasons, this is the third year in a row that a white man has earned the award.

I wonder what’s happening to the black master race of superior “afaletes.”

Two Stories on Young Adulthood

First, the Pentagon admits that parents of near-military age young adults are exercising their moral suasion and advising their sons or daughters against a military career.

And who can blame them? When they see that the only debate about the War in Iraq is that Democrats want to lose the war, while Republicans refuse to win the war, and both sides gleefully persecute those that actually want to win the war, they’re only using their brains to formulate wise advice.

Second, Norman Lear, the famed television impresario who brought us just about every prime time sitcom in the 1970s, wants to turn 18- to 24-year old voters into his mind-numbed foot soldiers for the Glorious Cultural Revolution.

His ad hoc group, “Declare Yourself,” is taking partial credit for the increase in voting turnout of the youngest registered voters for the 2004 Presidential election compared to 2000. But for what it’s worth, Bush’s margin of victory increased, largely due to significant swings toward him among middle-aged white women. Sometimes, revolutions aren’t so glorious.

Another Thing About the CASA of Maryland Brochure

From the Brochure:

Ordinarily, one shouldn’t think anything of this. But as many revenge-happy violent Hispanic Gangs (MS-13, 18th Streeters, Latin Kings, etc.) exist in this country, and as willing as the Paranoia-Industrial Complex (ADL, SPLC) is to sue cops over “racial profiling” of illegal aliens, this only serves to intimidate cops from apprehending illegal aliens for anything, even for matters more serious than just immigration status.

What Goes Around Comes Around

The Blotter by ABC:

U.S. and German officials fear terrorists are in the advanced planning stages of an attack on U.S. military personnel or tourists in Germany.

Law enforcement officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com that U.S. air marshals have been diverted to provide expanded protection of flights between Germany and the United States.

(snip)

Of particular concern, according to U.S. and German law enforcement officials, is Patch Barracks, the headquarters for U.S. European Command, near Stuttgart.

(snip)

The 9/ll hijackers planned their operation out of Hamburg, Germany, and the country continues to be known as a staging area for al Qaeda and groups affiliated with it.

“There are 300 to 500 people who are suspected to be part of al Qaeda cells in Germany,” said Col. Andrews Pratt (Ret.) of the George Marshall Center in Germany.

“In a democratic state like Germany, you just can’t go out and arbitrarily arrest people because they are under suspicion,” Pratt said.

The whole irony of this is that the American military continues to occupy Germany. Our occupation exerts subtle pressure on the German body politic to continue and promulgate racially egalitarian policies, and that itself is the reason why Germany is a hotbed of AQ cells, which, as you read, helped plan 9/11 from there, and now wants to hurt American military installations in the country.

Not only that, the American State Department is seeking to undercut right-wing nationalist European political parties, who would crack down on radical Islam on their own home fronts. Instead, our great idea is to help the very people that would bomb our German military bases.

If one wants to imply, that Col. Pratt means with his last statement that the American military would pressure the German government not to engage in racial profiling against Middle Eastern Muslims, and the result of that would be that the George Marshall Center would get blown to pieces, the irony would be even more stark.

Bring the American troops stationed in Germany home, and put them on the Southern Border. That way, we will be more secure, and the German government can help us and themselves be more secure from terrorism.

UPDATE 2:20 PM:  The German government does want to help us fight terrorism.  If they were as “anti-American” as some people in this country claim they are, then they would have never bothered to prosecute men who used Germany as a base to execute a terrorist attack on American soil.

Claire McCaskill Has an Obamagasm

Once again, I have to harp on the generality, that women tend to get insanely jealous and competitive with other women, when it comes to the acquisition and exercise of any kind of power or authority.

This is why Segolene Rodham Royal won’t be the next French President, and why her American analogue will have a very hard time winning.

And, true to form, it looks like Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is going endorse Barack Obama.

Ballgame Equilibrium

Matt and Andy Blunt would reserve this space for millionaires

P-D Political Fix:

As the Legislature’s adjournment of May 18 nears, dying bills often hitch a ride with bills heading toward passage.

That practice helps explain why ticket scalping would no longer be a crime under a bill the House passed and sent to the governor on Thursday.

Lobbyist Andy Blunt, the governor’s brother, has been seeking to relax the scalping law for his client, Ticketmaster, which wants to resell tickets over the Internet.

It’s time for a basic economics lesson, and please don’t fall asleep on me. It’s relevant to why repealing this law is a bad idea.

The price at which a seller is willing to sell something is the same as one where the buyer is willing to purchase the good or service is called the equilibrium price.

When there are high-profile sporting or concert events, e.g. Cardinals playoff or World Series games, there are a very limited number of seats, but a whole lot of people who want to buy tickets.

Therefore, left to the market, the price for a World Series ticket would be excessively high, so high that hardly anyone, save the 50,000 richest St. Louisans, could afford them.

To give the average person a chance to buy World Series tickets, team owners will price them far below market value. The tradeoff of setting a price below equilibrium is that there has to be a way to ration them, because at that low price, many more people are in the market than tickets available. Usually, the rationing solution involves long lines at the box office, or online availability for about ten minutes, or a ticket lottery.

In order to enforce the spirit of this policy, the state of Missouri prohibits the sale of tickets to any sporting or concert event at a price higher than the face value, anywhere in the state. The purpose of this law is to prevent a secondary black market that would virtually, in economic terms, push the “market” price of tickets back up to the undesirable equilibrium.

For if that happens, the average person is priced back out of the market.

If this bill is passed and signed into law, the secondary market, and all its vicissitudes, is legalized. And Gov. Blunt’s brother’s client stands to make a lot of money.

As an aside, you probably see or hear ads for ticket brokers that are “a short distance” from the stadium, where one can buy hard-to-find tickets for events and concerts. That “short distance” requires crossing a bridge, because those establishments are in Illinois, which does not ban ticket scalping.

But Bill Said…

One can catch STDs from that certain behavior that Bill Clinton said wasn’t sex.

If Monica Lewinsky comes down with throat cancer in the coming decades, then we will have our penultimate scientific proof.

What’s Important to NBC

Is not ratings, but diversity.

To think, NBC turned down American Idol, and House, which follows Idol on Fox Tuesdays, is distributed by NBC.

Don’t Count Your Liberal Election Victories Before They Hatch

CNS News:

A bill designed to ease the requirements for union organization could mark the “rebirth of progressive politics,” according to a professor who believes increased union membership will lead to Democratic victories and liberal policies.

“The labor movement is still the most effective political force for electing liberal candidates at the local, state, and federal levels,” Occidental College professor of politics Peter Dreier writes in the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. “A strong labor movement thus benefits other [liberal] agendas and causes.”

The history of organized labor, especially of white workers in manufacturing and industrial unions, demonstrates otherwise. George Wallace’s base of support outside the South was centered around white industrial union members. The “national origin” (i.e. racial) immigration restrictions of American law between 1924 and 1965 was won largely by lobbying on the part of industrial and manufacturing labor unions, and not coincidentally, such restrictions contributed to increased pay and compensation for such unionized workers, and the subsequent increase in the standard of living, and of political power of such unions, during that time period.

And don’t forget the Marxist lament that the “workers” of Europe sided with their home countries’ bellicosity rather than global egalitarian unity during World War I.

If organized labor sees a rebirth in membership and prestige, especially among white white-collar workers, (like I think it should), it will put a vast rightward push on the American body politic, not a leftward one.

But if the left thinks that this new unionization will push politics leftward due to increasing organization of non-white workers, I think their point is moot. The browning of America would mean more liberal political victories even without labor unions.

Hat Trick

Another way that a sombrero helped somebody beat the rap

The Blotter by ABC:

State prosecutors in North Carolina offered a plea deal and freed a suspected drug trafficker after it was revealed that a DEA agent forced the Mexican-born man to pose for a photo wearing a sombrero and holding a Mexican flag.

(snip)

“It was certainly very humiliating to my client,” said attorney Jeff Cutler, who represents Jorge Hernandez-Villalvazo, 42, who was originally scheduled to stand trial on cocaine trafficking charges this week.

First off, if the DEA made the bust, then why isn’t this in Federal court? After all, the U.S. Justice Department doesn’t usually yield to states’ rights.

Second, I wonder if such leniency would be granted to white criminal suspects who were similarly humiliated by the cops that arrest them.

I suppose this means that if the sombrero fits, you must acquit.