Hsu’s Your Diversionist Daddy?

Michael Savage said it, and it looks like he was right — The media held the Larry Craig scandal as an “Ace in the Hole” (turns out, for three years), until they needed to play it in order to distract from something else, such as HRC and her links to controversial fundraiser Norman Hsu.

This is just like the Mark Foley thing, again involving questionable homosexual behavior on the part of a Republican politician — the media knew about Foley’s activities for at least a year before they went public with it, but saved it for the right time, that being the heat of the 2006 midterm campaign season, to peddle the same kind of “homophobic bigotry” that they would accuse anyone else of doing, in order to keep religious right voters at home. The difference there was that Foley did nothing illegal, while Larry Craig seems to have lied to authorities.

My Kind of Gal

Frances Semler is my new hero. If her very presence on the Kansas City Parks Board is going to drive away the La Raza convention in 2009, and the NAACP convention in 2010, from KC, then she, just by living and breathing, will have done more than everyone combined in that cow town’s civic elite to make it a nicer place.

Big Whoop-Dee-Doo

One day in jail. That’s what it gets for falsely using its public authority to accuse wrongly three men of raping a black stripper, for which they could have spent years in state prisons full of blacks.

I think real prison time and a felony conviction would have made a more appropriate punishment.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But Deliver Us Some Evil

KHOU-CBS-11 Houston:

11 News exclusive: Inside the FBI’s secret files on Coretta Scott King

Oh good, does this mean we’re going to get sordid details on her life, and possibly her husband’s?

No dice. The story deals with how the evil sadistic racist J. Edgar Hoover could be so audacious as to have the FBI follow around the Wife of the Divine One. The closest we get to the substance of her life is this:

One agent even read and reviewed her 1969 book “My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.” and made a point to say Scott King’s “selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by.. (her) ..actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.”

“Shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.” You knew that already.

He Must Be Related to Al Gore III

Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) – A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of having posted a video of himself on YouTube driving at speeds of more than 140 mph, police said Thursday.

The car, a Ford Escort, was filmed on the A76 single-carriageway road in southwest Scotland.

The detained 19-year-old has not been named.

How did he get a Ford Escort to do 140?  Maybe he knows something that Al Gore III, who got a Toyota Prius Hybrid to do 100 in L.A., knows.

Game Plan

From the minds of bachelors:  Get her to like you enough that both of you agree to shack up.  While you’re living together, you do most of the housework, in order to butter her up enough that she will marry you.  Once the ring is on her finger and the rice has been tossed, hit the couch and grab the remote.

LiveScience confirms the dynamics, but they haven’t yet noticed the conspiratorial elements of it all.

Media Panic Over Bird Flu Isn’t Just Talk

Here’s another reason why you shouldn’t believe all the hype you see on TV:  The more scared and paranoid people get about epidemic diseases, the more likely it is that they will accept “blue helmet” UN “solutions,” brought to you by the UN “influenza coordinator” that seems to be Steve Martin’s long lost twin.

The irony is that President Bush wants to make these plans part of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” with Mexico, and if there are any epidemics of communicable diseases in the near future, it might well be because of our effectively open border with Mexico, in light of the young illegal alien from Mexico living in Atlanta that had TB and refused treatment, and was jailed in earnest.

This Is Turning Out to be Some Expensive Beer

KSDK-NBC-5:

Police arrested three men on a beer bust in DeSoto.

Police say on August 18th a man wearing nothing but a mask walked into Fish’s Quick Stop and started doing a hula dance.

Police say the plan was for the naked dancer to create a distraction while another man took a case of beer from the store.

The two men then jumped in a car with another man and took off. Witnesses jotted down the car’s license number and the clerk called police.

Three men, ages 19 to 23, face charges of shoplifting and indecent exposure.

And if the dancer is found guilty or pleads guilty to indecent exposure, he will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. If the Circuit Attorney can prove that the two men who kept their clothes on knew every detail of this plan, he can probably bring some conspiracy charges against them, too, and I think conspiracy to commit a sex offense is enough to make you a RSO.

Here’s an Idea for the ADL

P-D:

Men using the restroom at a few St. Louis-area bars hear a voice when they approach the urinal, and it’s not the booze talking.

“Hey, big guy,” says a sultry female voice. “Going out tonight? Having a few drinks?”

The greeting is not a come-on, but the latest attempt by the state of Missouri to reduce drunken driving. The voice comes from a motion-activated device that starts whenever someone approaches the urinal. After the greeting, the message becomes more serious.

“Make sure if you’re drinking, you find a sober driver,” she says. “Because if you drink and drive, the next urinal you use could be in jail. Remember, your future is in your hand.”

Missouri bought 200 devices at $22.50 each. The gadgets, which also serve as drain covers, were distributed to 11 area bars and bars in Kansas City, Jefferson City, Columbia and Springfield, Mo.

(snip)

A growing number of states are turning to the device, called a Wizmark, to combat drinking and driving. They’re popping up in restaurants and bars in Hawaii, West Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia and New York. Similar ones are being used in anti-drug campaigns in Australia.

As many times as I have retorted with “piss on you” to someone I disliked who said something that crossed me the wrong way, and wished secretly I could really do it, this is one case where, if you don’t like what the smart-aleck urinal is telling you, not only can you literally do it, you are doing it.

Maybe the ADL can look into making and distributing Wizmarks. Give me a Big Gulp, and point me to that restroom.

Out with Tag, In with Tag

AP:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don’t chase each other, she said.

Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn’t object.

In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.

What kind of running games exist that don’t involve children chasing each other? As for “being chased against their will,” it’s not the worst thing in the world, compared to being nabbed in a game of dodgeball against your will.

Those students need not worry, especially the boys. They may be denied Tag now, but once they get into middle school, they’ll be very familiar with Tag.

Tim Kaine’s Hardworking, Better Life-Seeking Peepz

Ten percent of Virginia’s jail population and two percent of its prison population are illegal aliens.  That as I head on over to Babelfish to translate the lyrics to “Carry Me Back to Ole Virginney” into Spanish…

Is John McCain Sawing Log Cabins?

McCain wants Larry Craig to step down, in the wake of the revelation of his disorderly conduct arrest and the likely implication of which way he swings.

Let’s add this all up. McCain’s main man in Idaho is gay thanks to what he tried to do to an undercover cop, his main main in South Carolina, Lindsay Graham, seems to be light in the loafers, and a few weeks ago, Florida State Rep. Bob Allen, his Florida co-chairman, had to quit because he tried to solicit gay sex from an undercover cop inside a public restroom near a beach.

Think of a picture of John McCain in your minds, and let the lyrics run through your mind: “All things just keep getting better…” In this case, it might be a Straight Eye for the Queer Guys.

The Republican Nominee for President in 2008 Has Just Won Florida

He’s Still Alive, and Insane.

Fidel Castro hasn’t kicked off yet, and he’s just coherent enough to announce to the Cuban press that an HRC-BHO ticket for the Democrats would be a winning combination. While I don’t think that will happen, it is almost a certainty that either one will win the nomination if Al Gore doesn’t run. And the Cuban-American community has a long memory.

Castro also took the opportunity to praise Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, stating that the latter was his favorite American President of his lifetime. He also accused President Bush of stealing the vote in Florida in 2000.

This demonstrates two things: Modern-day post-Soviet communism is nothing more that left-wing extremism, and self-avowed communists and mainstream liberals are far closer to each other in an ideological sense than “mainstream” and neo-conservatives and out-and-outright fascists. Also it might demonstrate that Fidel Castro has joined the Daily Kos.

No Joke

Karl Rove’s White House friends played a practical joke on him and his Jaguar sedan — by placing an “I (Heart) Obama” sticker on the rear windshield, then covering the whole car in plastic wrap.

What’s so funny about the concept of Karl Rove liking BHO?  We know for a fact that a lot of the ex-Bushites are signing on with Obama.

Singles State

The state of California is on track to eliminate legal recognition and special status of any marriage, so thinks the few remaining pro-family individuals in the state. What I think is going on is that gay and pro-gay politicians are drawing a line in the sand, stating that if gays can’t be married in the state, then nobody can.

If that happens, then California taxpayers will be in the same bind as those wedded homosexuals in states that have adopted gay marriage. Federal law states that the marital status you use for your Federal tax return is the same one that you have to use on your state income tax return, if your state has income taxes. Furthermore, the IRS does not recognize gay marriages. This means that in a state like Massachusetts, a gay couple either has to lie to the Feds to tell the truth to the state, or vice-versa.

Something similar will happen in California once they delegitimize all marriages. Since nobody in the state will be married, it will be almost everyone (except Heads of Household) that will be in this legal Catch-22 when filing their returns.

Eagle Forum Starts a Blog

SchlaflyBlog (say that ten times really quickly) has been added to the blogroll.

“Conservative” Blog Calls For Bush to Commute Vick’s Prison Sentence

A writer for the Huffington Post has made this call. His reasoning is that since dogfighting is a black thing, we can’t think of it as a criminal enterprise, because we must be racially sensitive.

Using this logic, we should simply repeal most laws against violent crime.

The silver lining to the cloud of this opinion is that it admits that dogfighting has become an element of modern-day hip hop black culture. Until now, a lot of black talking head excuseologists tried to make the case that it, along with cockfighting, is a “white thing.”

Everyone knows that the Huffington Post is a left-of-center organ. But there are some people (as I turn my head in the general direction of Montgomery, Alabama, cough gag) who cite its founder, Arianna Huffington, and the blog, as a “conservative” source, (especially when they lash out at real right-wingers), simply because she was once married to an acey-deucey that ran for U.S. Senate from California as a Republican.

Of Hierarchy and Democracy

Mpls. Star-Tribune:

A group of activists who describe themselves as “anarchists and anti-authoritarians” will hold a private strategy session over the Labor Day weekend to discuss plans to protest at the Republican National Convention to be held in St. Paul Sept. 1-4, 2008.

The group, called the RNC Welcoming Committee, held a news conference Monday at the Jack Pine Community Center on Lake Street in Minneapolis, where Bea Bridges, speaking for the committee, showed a video that hinted at confrontational tactics, read a statement and walked out, taking no questions.

The group had sent out an announcement last week, saying questions had to be submitted by e-mail a week in advance.

Bridges said the group favors “ending capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and all other forms of hierarchy” to be replaced with “direct, participatory democracy.”

That’s right, because we all know that there are no hierarchies or is no elitism that develop(s) as a result of pure democracy, cough cough cough.

Actually, the history of the last decade-and-a-half shows that “direct, participatory democracy” leads to ballot measures opposing illegal aliens, affirmative action, and supporting Southern Heritage winning big, yet the “hierarchy” with lifetime appointments and black robes often finds ways to undo the “direct” will of the people. I wonder what this mob that’s going to show off in St. Paul a year from now thinks of those apples.

Canine Abuse

With the Michael Vick scandal past its peak, I want to take this opportunity to remind you that, while Vick did not run his dogfighting operations in Atlanta, he was a player for the team’s NFL franchise.  And Atlanta seems to be a hotbed of canine abuse stories this year, one of which involved another Falcons player.  And both involved pit bulls.

Of Shotguns, Weddings, and Shotgun Weddings

Really, long guns aren’t an issue here; I just needed a cute title to grab attention.

Today, two new laws take effect in Missouri. First, the “permit to transfer” paperwork to transfer a “concealable firearm” (handguns) is gone, (as I thought it was repealed in a May 20 post in this space), replaced by the Federal instant background check that is the norm in most other places. Gun shows were never successful in Missouri because of the now-dispatched system; the Permit to Transfer paperwork and mandated waiting period was up to seven days. Now I imagine that there will be more and increasingly successful gun shows in the state.

Second, the three-day waiting period between applying for a marriage license and actually receiving it is now gone. The purpose of the “old gin law” was to deter hasty and intoxicated marriages, though legally speaking, since marriage is a contract, and being drunk or high precludes genuineness of assent into any contract, therefore any contract (including marriage) would be declared null and void if any one party was proven to be intoxicated.

So this means that, starting today, a shotgun wedding could happen on the same day that the old man gets mad.

Otherwise, in the immortal words of Johnny Cash:

We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout,
We’ve been talkin’ ’bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out.
I’m goin’ to Jackson, I’m gonna mess around,
Yeah, I’m goin’ to Jackson,
Look out Jackson town.

“Light in the Loafers” Lindsey Has a Friend

Larry and Lindsey sittin’ in a tree…

You know the rest.

Quintessentially Blonde

If you have listened to conservative talk radio or surfed the rightosphere any at all today, I’m sure you have seen the video or heard the audio thereof of Miss South Carolina making an ass out of herself during this weekend’s Miss Teen USA pageant.

In case you haven’t, enjoy.

A judge asked her what she thought of the fact that only 20% of Americans are able to find the USA on a blank political map of the world. Her stupid, hare-brained, quintessentially blonde jibberish had something to do with Iraq and South Africa, and a lot of blah-blah-blah in between. The only part where she answered the question was to say that the reason was that the average American doesn’t have a map. That’s as stupid as saying that one who can’t add or subtract can’t do so because he doesn’t own an arithmetic textbook.

To think, she finished in fourth place. I wonder what the fifth place finisher was thinking. If she got the same question, maybe her answer was, “What’s a map?”

School Prayer

From Boortz this morning: James Jones, the principal of McNair High School in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, held an assembly of his school this morning, wherein he had students pray that the Federal judge presiding over the case of the now-admitted Federal felon, Michael Vick, grants leniency in sentencing.

Methinks someone bet a whole lot of money on the Falcons this season.

UPDATE 8/29:  According to this profile, McNair High School has 1240 students, 1228 of them are black, and the other 12 are split evenly between Hispanic and white.  Also, there are 447 freshmen versus 200 seniors, meaning that this school has a high dropout rate.

Moons In Vermont

In order to comply with state laws that prohibit discrimination against transgendered individuals, the University of Vermont’s new campus student center not only has restrooms for those archaic, antiquated gender classifications of “men” and “women,” but “gender-neutral” facilities for the transgendered/transsexual. The trouble with that, aside from the obvious rantings that this somewhat prudish moralist could do in this space, is that if you’re going to have these “gender-neutral” restrooms along with those for men and women, the only people who will use the g/n facilities are the t/g and the t/s.

Fox News:

“A multi-use bathroom doesn’t necessarily feel safe to transgendered students, because they have concerns about how their gender would be read by others,” said Dot Brauer, director of the school’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Ally Services.

In other words, we shouldn’t interpret these g/n restrooms as “unisex,” because of the presence of men’s and women’s restrooms, and for the reasons that Miss Brauer gave above. Gender-neutral facilities are essentially a codeword for, and designed for, t/g and t/s.

Also, now we’re supposed to think of “Questioning” and “Ally” in the same league as GLBT itself. Maybe the department could be expanded to “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Questioning, Confused, and Ally Services.”

Also:

But Brauer said the school can do more. She wants to see more gender-neutral bathrooms in the library, and private showers in the gym.

So what she is saying is that there should be more private (rather than communal) showers in both “genders’” locker rooms. So this means that Miss Brauer thinks that transgendered people should use the locker rooms of their biological gender, but have privately partitioned shower space or stalls. Whatever harassment they would supposedly receive in an “old-fashioned” single-gender restroom or a unisex restroom such that the University has to put in “gender-neutral” restrooms would be far worse in a space where people are expected to cavort naked or near-naked much of the time. At this rate, why not create gender-neutral locker rooms?

And if the sensitivities of people in their semi-private collective space are so imporant now, does the University of Vermont allow women journalism students to nose their way into men’s locker rooms to “interview” (i.e. check out) male athletes?

Want to Win a Big Powerball Jackpot?

The next time it goes above $300 million, go to Richmond, Indiana (near the Ohio line along I-70) and buy tickets. Last night’s jackpot was won with a ticket purchased there, and the first time PB went above $300 million, in 1999, twelve machine shop workers from suburban Columbus, Ohio pooled money to travel to Richmond and buy tickets there.

Righteous Indig-Nation

Reuters:

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – The mayors of the Texan city of El Paso and the Mexican city of Juarez led a protest by dozens of people on Saturday against a planned border wall to stem illegal immigration into America.

Why wouldn’t they upset?  They’re thinking that such a border wall would split Mexico apart, i.e. it would separate Mexicans in Juarez, Mexico with Mexicans in El Paso, Mexico (formerly known as Texas, USA).

Honestly, this wall has to get built before the effective border gets pushed even further northward.  The good news is that, with all the Mexicans in both El Paso and Juarez, if all they can get out to protest are “dozens,” then they’re not very infuriated.

From the Pole to the Academy

AP:

SMYRNA, Tenn. – A man who authorities say used his computer to make fake $100 bills to buy lap dances at a strip club has pleaded guilty to counterfeiting charges, federal prosecutors said.

Strippers at Deja Vu in Nashville were suspicious of the bills and called police after Damon Armagost spent $600 of the fake money April 16, authorities said.

When officers arrived, Armagost first told them he got the money when he sold gold coins for $1,400 to an unidentified person.

U.S. Secret Service agents later determined that counterfeit bills with the same serial number had been passed in other parts of the country. When they went to Armagost’s Smyrna home, about 20 miles southeast of Nashville, a family member told agents that an image of a $100 bill had been on a computer there.

Armagost then acknowledged that he had downloaded the image from the Internet and printed 14 of the bills, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty Friday to manufacturing and passing counterfeit currency and has a sentencing date of Nov. 5.

Strippers ought to know as well as the best experts how to spot counterfeit bills implicitly — they deal with cash quite a lot. Maybe they ought to sign up for the Secret Service Academy, but they’ll have to wait until they install a pole.

Unbelievable. See the V (Head to Prison).

Michael Vick has agreed to the plea deal, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell dropped the hammer in earnest — with an indefinite suspension from league activity or association. This means that if he is ever to play in the NFL again, he will have to beg for and get mercy from Goodell (or a future Commissioner) at some point in the future.

Signing bonuses for NFL players are paid up front, but in the accounting sense, they are expensed prorated over the life of the contract. The reason for that is that the player can have more money up front, and the team doesn’t have a huge hit against their salary cap (i.e. the maximum aggregate payroll for their playing roster that every team is allowed, even if a team could afford more) in a given year. The other side of that sword is that if a player doesn’t finish his contract, the team can make motions to have a prorated portion of the bonus money based on the fraction of the unfulfilled contract returned. In this case, the Atlanta Falcons can now try to get Vick to return $22 million.

Yahoo Sports has this timeline of facts in the Vick dogfighting scandal. Notice the first three events:

Early 2001 — Vick, Quanis L. Phillips and Tony Taylor decided to start a venture “aimed at sponsoring American Pit Bull Terriers in dogfighting competitions.” Later that same year, Purnell A. Peace, joined the venture.

May 2001 — Taylor identifies the Surry County, Va., property as a “suitable location for housing and training pit bulls for fighting.”

June 29, 2002 — Vick pays about $34,000 for the purchase of the property.

Notice that in May 2001, one of his cohorts and eventual co-defendants scouted out Surry County as a good place. We know that the county is majority black, and therefore likely elects blacks to everything, including (as of this year) the county’s state D.A. and the county sheriff. We also know that both men did nothing to investigate the Vick-dogfighting allegations in their county, and went so far as to haul out the R-word to impugn the Feds’ motives in investigating. Perhaps Mr. Taylor thought that with a friendly black sheriff and a friendly black D.A., that they would be home free in Surry County.

The Sexist Monkeys

Methinks some lavender primates need gender sensitivity training.

BBC:

A troop of vervet monkeys is giving Kenyan villagers long days and sleepless nights, destroying crops and causing a food crisis.

Earlier this month, local MP Paul Muite urged the Kenyan Wildlife Service to help contain their aggressive behaviour.

But Mr Muite caused laughter when he told parliament that the monkeys had taken to harassing and mocking women in a village.

(snip)

And because women are primarily responsible for the farms, they have borne the brunt of the problem, as they try to guard their crops.

They say the monkeys are more afraid of young men than women and children, and the bolder ones throw stones and chase the women from their farms.

(snip)

In addition to stealing their crops, the monkeys also make sexually explicit gestures at the women, they claim.

“The monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts. We are afraid that they will sexually harass us,” said Mrs Njeri.

African human beings, especially men, are often given to the same kind of behavior. (“Wunt summa dis?” as the black man ogles a passing woman by saying that and either pointing at his package, cupping his junk in his hand, or actually dropping his pants and showing it off). If this story from Kenya is true (and I wouldn’t discount the possibility that it’s a gag), then the irony is so noted.

SF Chronicle Writer Proposes City-Funded “Shooting Galleries” For Heroin Addicts

Really.

A better idea would be city-funded clinics that treat heroin addicts with opioantagonants.

Otherwise, this idea is as silly as saying that city-funded shooting ranges is the best way to stop violent crime.