Rachel Ray With Fins

WSIL-3:  Crisis In Cairo

That could be any time.

KSDK:  Police: Shoe store robbed, suspect arrested

Sources describe him as a “lost sole.”

WND:  Driver’s licenses let applicants pick gender

I thought that was taken care of at the moment of conception.

AP/Obama:  Obama readies road map for new bailout spending

Remember when you had to unfold a map so big that there wasn’t enough room in your car?  That’s what Obama’s road map is going to be like.

AP/Obama:  Analysis: Team Obama preoccupied with Bush

The last Democrat in the White House was also preoccupied with bush.

USNAWR:  Must You Diet on Super Bowl Sunday?

You won’t feel like eating if your team loses.  Beentheredonethat.

SPACE.com:  Space Station Crew Backs Steelers in Super Bowl

At the time they went up to the Space Station, there weren’t any Arizona Cardinals fans to be found, even in Arizona.

Time:  New Playground Architecture: Bye, Jungle Gym

Hello, Rainforest Gym.

McClathcy:  GOP picks its first black chairman, but will change follow?

Not if Michael Steele has his way, the GOP will lose as usual.

Reuters:  Earth-hunter telescope prepared for launch

It won’t be hard, just have the telescope turn backwards.  Voila, Earth.

Reuters:  Dolphins are capable sea chefs, scientists say

Aquariums are already busy giving new names to their Dolphins like Gordon Ramsay and Rachel Ray.

MacWorld:  ‘Duck Hunt’ iPhone game pulled at Nintendo’s request

Good, I hate it when a dog laughs at me.

Reuters:  Rapper DMX sentenced to 90 days in jail

Harrumph!!! Look at the jurisdiction.  He better get used to pink underwear and tents.

Judges to Bryce: Lump It

Eight Circus sides with the School.  Bob Herman will appeal to SCOTUS.

The P-D outlines the school’s case (but very little of Archambo’s case), relaying several racial incidents at Farmington High School.

In the last several decades, because so many jobs have been drained out of small town Missouri because of free trade, powerful outstate legislators (Kevin Engler, a Farmingtonian, now runs the Senate) have feted prison construction and placement in these towns, in order to create jobs for the locals.  Apparently, the prison near Farmington is a rather big one.

The flip side of the coin, especially with prisons near towns that aren’t too far from major cities, like Farmington vis-a-vis St. Louis, is that many black men from St. Louis are sent to Farmington to serve their sentences, and invariably, some members of their family move into the town to be close to their incarcerated loved one.  This has created something of a semi-permanent but transient black population in Farmington, and thus a sizable black minority in the student body at the high school.

Unfortunately, rural public schools are just as liberal as the urban ones, so of course the black students’ feelings will be the first ones taken into consideration.  Our diversity is our strength, of course; screw the kind of people that have lived in Farmington for several generations.

On the Other Hand…

You can’t be too hard on a guy who steals explosives from the police in anticipation of the 2012 end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.  After all, he did seem to be sensitive to the culture of one of the ancient indigenous civilizations of North America.  And we are told that we need their descendants here to do the jobs that we won’t do, and for more diversity.

The Mirror Opposite of Vincent Richardson

In the mirror opposite end of the state.

Two Murphysboro men are now accused of using Carbondale P.D. radios and guns to knock back a bank in Carbondale last November.  Evidently, they planned the scheme starting in the summer, and it got pretty sophisticated with the number of diversionary tactics they employed.In the mirror opposite end of the state.

Odd Birds

There was an AP article today about the problem that commercial airplanes have with birds, in the aftermath of the Miracle on the Hudson several weeks ago.

I’m beginning to wonder — Could it be the reason why major airports don’t have any effective bird mitigation is because of either the whining of individual do-gooder libs and/or the same on the part of the animal rights crowd?

Just wondering.

Thanks For Your Concern

Several people have e-mailed me and asked if I was affected by the ice storm that battered this part of the country.

How close was I to regions that had power outages?  As close as the (still unshaven as of this afternoon) hair on my chiney chin chin.  The Murphysboro-Carbondale-Marion belt had mostly snow and some ice, but just a few paces south and there was enough ice to cause outages.  Further south, on an east-west line that runs from about Paducah to Anna to Sikeston to Dexter to Poplar Bluff — that area was really hit hard.  At the worst, almost everyone in that area lost power.  Nearly all of those in Southern Illinois that lost power has got it back, but at the moment, southeast Missouri including the Bootheel is still in the dark and cold.  Paducah isn’t much better off.

It did affect me in that my work was closed both Tuesday and Wednesday.

The same storm dumped as much as almost 10 inches of snow in certain points around St. Louis.

Fun With Obamablagobaugh

P-D:  Fewer Illinois teens dying in car wrecks

Of course, when gas was $4.19 a gallon in Illinois last summer, that made driving beyond the budget of the average teenager.
Urban Review St. Louis:  Florissant Citizens Seek Financial Audit

The Loweryfather bashes in the knees of said citizens.

SEMO:  Some Stoddard County residents toughing it out without power, water

And worse, without barbecue.

P-D:  Obama touts middle-class task force led by Biden

Good thing, because a career politician is the only one who can rescue the middle class.

Bloomberg:  Obama Says Economy a ‘Disaster’ for Middle Class

So the two most obvious solutions are open borders and free trade, eh Barry?
Reuters:  U.S. business group opposes “Buy American” plan

And propose a “Buy China” plan.
P-D:  Blagojo…. Blagava… Blugoov….. Blagggh….. What’s his name?

It now only matters to the people who run The Political Graveyard website.

AP:  Ill.’s new gov: We’ll `fumigate state government’

Gonna need a lot of Raid, Pat.  This IS Illinois, after all.

Jason Rosenbaum:  Could anybody with the last name of Blagojevich get elected to statewide office in Missouri?

Well, someone with the last name of Obama got elected to national office in America.

NPR:  Chicago Bids Farewell To ‘Blago’ With Mixed Emotions

I’m bidding farewell to ‘Blago’ with unmixed gloating.  Then again, the State Senate bounced him out yesterday with unmixed gloating, too.

P-D:  Obama or Rush? GOPers asked to choose on stimulus

The scary part is that Congressional Republicans could go either way, or that it’s so not obvious which way they’ll go that someone can actually wonder.

AP/Obama:  Rush Limbaugh challenging notion of new politics

I could just have imagined the scene in the early 1960s:  Rush’s father took boy Rush to visit the GOP headquarters, and said, “Son, all this’ll be yours someday.”

P-D Race:  Critic cites racial overtones in cartoonists’ drawings of Obama’s lips

Dear ‘toonist:  Avoid the row, draw the ears.

Slashdot:  Microsoft Surface To Coordinate SuperBowl Security

Sounds like the perfect situation for a 14-year old to go in and pretend to be part of the security force.

PC World:   Microsoft Patent Makes Smartphones More Like PCs

RIP, Smartphones. 1993-2009.

LiveScience:  Do Huge NFL Players Help Teams Win?

Well, small players certainly won’t help.

PC Mag:  NEC To Lay Off 18,500, Exit LCD Businesses

Also eliminate the need for three-letter acronyms.

PC Mag:  Gallium Nitride LEDs Sound Promising

Sound expensive.

AP/Obama:  Springsteen calls Wal-Mart deal a mistake

Wants to find an out in the contract and then swing a deal with Costco.

Today’s Gang News

(1)  You mean to tell me that Missouri cities like Columbia and Fayette have something called the “Cut Throats” gang?  The only good news is that Kansas City has them while St. Louis doesn’t.

(2)  While I don’t doubt that street gangs are a big problem, I doubt the notion that 80% of all crimes in the U.S. are linked to gangs.  In order to arrive at that figure, they have to have a very generous definition of a gang-linkable crime.  For instance, if you’re jacked at gunpoint for money so that the robber can buy dope from a gang, I wouldn’t consider it a gang crime, but it seems that the FBI does.  Also, there is the question of what is and is not a gang, and what is and is not a gang member.  Both defintions are very malleable, and if you’re someone who makes a living in the business (or rather, the hustle) of gang mitigation and prevention, you have much the incentive to fudge the statistics for the worse.

The Days Grow Short, When You Reach September

Gov. Pat Quinn wants to move the Illinois primaries from March to September.  I don’t know if he wants this to be permanent, or just for the 2010 cycle.

I don’t know how I feel about the idea personally, but if I were a politician, I would not want the party primaries to be too early, because a March primary like IL’s means an eight-month general election cycle.  I also would not want a primary so late, such as September, that you jump right from primary to the heat of the general election season, thus you have no time to rest.

I think a good compromise would be to have it no earlier than June, but no later than August (Missouri’s is in August).

Right Idea

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) wants CEOs of firms receiving Federal bailout money to be paid no more than the President, i.e. $400,000 a year.

I think she has the right kind of idea, but the version I advocate is that CEOs of publicly traded corporations should be limited in salary to a certain multiple of the median of entry level employees.

Unlike many right wingers, I think these kinds of limits are good ideas.  What most people forget about the concept of a corporation in the American experience is basic first-day-of-law-school stuff:  A corporation is a governmentally-recognized artificial person.  No government?  No corporations.  Also, you need another level of government permission to slice up your ownership into shares of stock.

It is no less insane for governments to make basic rules for the sake of common decency than it is for governments to post speed limits on government built and maintained roads.

Also, most corporate CEOs today are not the moral equivalent of an entrepreneur with a good idea who makes a lot of money.  They are merely high level managerial employees.  Better paid and compensated employees, no doubt, but employees nonetheless.

Frankly, high CEO compensation is not the most pressing issue in the world, nor much the reason why the companies they supervise are in trouble.  However, for me, it’s the principle of the thing.

Also, the tax implications are nil because the top marginal tax rate for corporations is the same as that for individuals, so a dollar of high salary to a CEO that isn’t paid and isn’t taxed at 35% is a dollar of corporate profit that is taxed at 35%.

If your company does better, a CEO can get paid more under my proposal if the median entry level wages and/or salaries increase.  However, the upward trend is not inexorable, because there is only so much than entry level workers can be paid in aggregate.  But, again, it’s a moral thing with me — if the company can’t afford to pay the entry level a median of $50,000 a year, then the CEO has no business making more than (as an example) 20 times that, or $1 million a year.

Also, I am of the opinion that the higher one advances in the corporation, the less likely it is that one should be allowed to own stock in that corporation.  You figure, if you’re on the entry level at a publicly-traded corp, and you own stock, you as an entry-level worker can only affect your own work, not anybody else’s (mostly).  Therefore, your only incentive if you own stock is to do the best work you can.  If you’re the CEO, and you own stock, mutual fund managers are crawling all over your ass to keep the stock price high, and your work as a CEO not only affects you, but every employee in the corporation.  What you’ll do is outsource and layoff, to find the cheapest labor, to make The Street happy.  And that personally benefits you.

***

The reason I like this multiple-of-median idea better than a McCaskillite absolute salary ceiling is that I think an absolute cap is going too far.  There has to be a way for a CEO to make more money, and my idea allows for that — the better the corporation does, the more entry-level workers can be paid, and therefore the CEO can make more.  If you put a hard cap of $400,000, they’ll absolutely have no incentive to do a good job.

The Yearly Crisis Plan

P-D:

Not making the grade

After four years of high school reform, after a host of new programs, new schedules and new approaches, Hazelwood School District high schools are failing.

(snip)

A major feature of the plan calls for a new “4-by-4″ block schedule for the 2009-2010 school year. Students will take four 90-minute courses each day instead of seven 50-minute classes.

A major focus is on improving classroom instruction. Department chair positions will be eliminated, and teachers will receive new training. Data and test results will be scrutinized weekly.

Wright said despite an earlier crisis plan implemented in 2003, high school student performance has not improved.

So why have another crisis plan?  I wonder why the Hazelwood District needs “crises plans.”

I don’t see what is so controversial (as you can read in the article) about longer classes with fewer each day.  What it would mean is that most of the courses would be scheduled for every other day — that’s the way most college courses work.

Also, I don’t see why high schools have department chairs.  Hell, in most colleges and universities, most profs don’t want to be the chair of their disciplinary department, they consider the job to be a useless grind.  In most cases, the chairmanship rotates to different profs within the discipline on a time period basis.

Still the Stupid Party, Still Stupid

And we haven’t learned anything.  Putting someone in as RNC Chairman who is not only so obviously different than almost everyone who is associated with The Party, and almost everyone who votes for The Party’s candidate — that’s airheaded enough.  But don’t forget that Michael Steele has never won any public office on his own.  He has been the Republican Party chairman for his county and of Maryland.  He did become Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, but in that state, Lt. Govs are not elected separately, like they are in Missouri — like in the Federal Presidential game, Gubernatorial candidates choose a running mate, and Bob Ehrlich choose Steele.  Therefore, he only won Lt. Gov. because Ehrlich won Governor.  Steele did try to run for U.S. Senate in 2006, but lost to Ben Cardin, who probably got at least 95% of the black vote over the black guy.

Quite honestly, there was nobody in the RNC race that I was too excited about, so I probably would have had this conclusion no matter who won.  Ken Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State who, with Steele, was part of a triumvirate of black Republicans who ran for major public office that year, the third being Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, and they all lost (ha ha), also had his hat in the ring.  The rest were Bushite neo-cons.

The Tax Man Cometh Not

President Obama, Vice-President Biden and Tax Cheat Treasury Secretary Geithner bashing Wall Stret Execs for taking in aggregate some $18 billion in bonuses in 2008, or rather, for fiddling whole Rome burnt.

I don’t like it, either, because it doesn’t pass the smell test.  But for people associated with government to be mad is a little hypocritical, because those bonuses are also income to the execs that get it, and are thus subject to Federal and New York State income taxes.  Since they already made a lot of money, surely those bonuses were subject to the highest marginal income tax rate for both the Feds and the state.  Also New York City has an come tax.

A few days ago, Rush had a story that the marginal decrease in these bonuses from 2007 to 2008 means that the treasuries of the state and the city are missing the revenue based on smaller bonuses.  It was something like $1 billion for the state and $270 million for the city.

Even if these firms would not have paid these bonuses, the tax effect would have been a cat’s game, because the top marginal rate for corporations is the same as it is for individuals, 35%.  If they would have kept enough employees on the payroll commensurate with those bonuses, (i.e. kept $18 bn worth of employees rather than taking the bonuses), the governments would have lost out because all of those salaries would be taxed at lower rates, because each individual is making less than the income for the top marginal tax rates, plus they can take certain deductions and child credits that high income earners cannot.

Mrs. Obama, You Have a Lot of Nerve

In gushing over Lilly Ledbetter today at the White House, as her husband signs the eponymous Congressional act into law.  That coming from a woman whose income for doing the affirmative action sinecure job at the University of Chicago Hospital tripled after her husband (a man) won election as U.S. Senator.  They only thought she was worth more because of what some man did.

Buh Bye

The Governor is removed.

Long live the Governor.

The votes in the State Senate today were both unanimous (59-0) both to remove Blago and also to prohibit him from running for public office in the state of Illinois for the rest of his life.

The vote in the House for the impeachment last month was 117-1 vote, and that one was some dickhead from Chicago who claimed his contrarian vote had to do some some procedural gibberish.  Truth is he wanted to be the answer to some question in a future edition of Trivial Pursuit.  Still, both the House and Senate are run by Democrats, and all RodB could get is one vote out of 177 people.

I caught the tail end of the removal debate in the Senate, and a few of them babbled on about how this was so horrible in a state that gave the country President Obama.  Screw that, Obama may not be that corrupt, but he’s still the same Chicago machine/Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” type of politician.

Now all I hope is that RodB knows enough to take down the Chicagograd machine.  I’m beginning to fear that he doesn’t, hence the unanimous votes in the Senate today.

Fun With Gamers

AP/Obama:  New species of babbler bird discovered in China

Almost a hundred new species can be found in the U.S. Senate, and another one can be found at 34th and Massachusetts in the same city.

AFP:  Free online computer games win US fans in dismal economy

How long will people be taken by any one of the ten thousand versions of Blocks?

Reuters:  NFL players get shot at a virtual championship

If they win, they’ll be rewarded with virtual sex from virtual hoes.

SPACE.com:  Attempts to Contact Aliens Date Back More Than 150 Years

I pity the intelligent civilization that’s now seeing “Father Knows Best” — It’ll go downhill from there.

AP:  Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist dies at Florida home

“Sweet Home Florida” just doesn’t grab me.

Attention Vincent Richardson. If You’re Reading This…

And you’re this Vincent Richardson:

Who is accused of doing this, Then I highly suggest you get this book and read it.  Especially if you are of the mindset that you want to be a cop in order “to make difference.”  You better dispatch that attitude ASAP for your own good.

***

Attention Illinois Republican Party:  Send some of your lawyers up to Chicago and represent this young man pro bono.  It would be the perfect way to get back at the Daley/Weis/Obama/Chicagograd machine, that combined with Gov. Rod Blagojevich running his mouth after his upcoming removal from office, means that the Chicagograd political machine will fall, Southern Illinois will get statehood, and enact conceal-carry.

***

As far as my personal opinion on the question at hand, I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, we just can’t have people running around and pretending to be cops, so he ought to be punished for that alone.  What if it was an AQ operative in a sleeper cell who wanted to destabilize America by doing something to the Sears Tower, or otherwise wreaking havoc in America’s third largest city?  What if it were a garden variety Chicago thug who wanted to engage in more thuggery?  Just on that basis alone, Mr. Richardson ought to be punished, definitely by being a juvenile guest of the state for at least some time.

On the other hand, he evidently did what he did because he’s obsessed with the calling of law enforcement.  He did not carry a gun, and evidently maintained an adult enough demeanor so that he wasn’t suspected while on “duty.”  Also, his actions exposed rank incompetency and insouciance to standards within the Chicago Police Department, and in City Hall.  As such, his punishment should not be severe.  Should it legally preclude a future law enforcement career for him?  I’m undecided, but considering the low quality of individual that the CPD willingly accepts, Mr. Richardson shouldn’t be automatically be rejected.  What I worry about is that the CPD will so busy plugging up the “fake cop” hole that they’ll open up another hole for some real ne’er-do-well to slip through.  Hopefully, though, his actions will have done far more good than bad in the final analysis.

Also, unlike some, I have no problem with the Chicago MSM publishing his name and showing a pic.  He allegedly and illicitly assumed a share of the monopoly on the use of power and deadly force that is a police officer, evidently three times now.  He did a very adult thing, so I don’t think it’s so wrong that we know who he is.  I also don’t boo-hoo that he might have gotten killed in the line of “duty” — that’s a danger for the real cops, especially in a place like Chicago, full of arrogant thug blacks mollycoddled by a liberal city and state that’s proud of its racially egalitarian, “Lincolnian” heritage.  Can’t stand the heat?  Get out of the kitchen.

I will say that if his life’s ambition is to become a Chicago city cop, then there is something mentally wrong with him.  The Department hangs white cops out to dry in their hour of need, so I imagine it’s not much better for the black CPD cops.

A Good Name is to be Chosen Rather Than a Clean Rap Sheet

LiveScience:

Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely to Break Law

Boys in the United States with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Ivan.

(snip)

While the names are likely not the cause of crime, the researchers argue that “they are connected to factors that increase the tendency to commit crime, such as a disadvantaged home environment, residence in a county with low socioeconomic status, and households run by one parent.”

(snip)

The findings could help officials ” identify individuals at high risk of committing or recommitting crime, leading to more effective and targeted intervention programs,” the authors conclude.

No kidding.  You think a boy named N’Deshawntavious might need a little more attention from law enforcement than one named Stewart?

The study is bassackwards.  It’s not the names that are at fault, it’s that black parents are more likely to give their black sons strange and ostentatious names that are only given to black boys.  And, of course, since black boys and men are more likely than any other race/gender group to commit a violent crime, it’s no wonder that the authors of this study made this conclusion.

Waiting to Exhale

Reuters:  Clinton says world “exhaling” with Obama at top

No, Hillary, not ALL of the world.  Some of it is inhaling.

AP/Obama:  Bill Clinton made millions from foreign sources

Too late, Hillary’s already Secretary.

AP/Obama:  Mexicans turn to voodoo to help team beat the US

If that fails, then they’ll go to their plan of last resort, that is to have better players.

P-D:  Akin, House GOPers unpersuaded by Obama stimulus visit

We found one Republican in Washington who got himself inoculated against Obamaitis.

Reuters:  World economy may lose 51 million jobs: U.N. agency

With Obama’s campaign promises, I figure the world will need 22 Obamas to get all those jobs back.

Reuters:  New York City fears return to 1970s

Bell bottoms, powder blue leisure suits, the Bee Gees, Stagflation…the last thing we need.

MSNBC:  Debt may do what rain, heat, gloom can’t – Postal service considers cutting one day of mail delivery due to deficit

Great, now I’ll have only five different letter carriers a week, not six.

Utah Catches the California Madness

Wants to designate “gang-free zones.”

Oh, if only it were that easy.

I’m waiting for one of the ‘bangers to make holes in one of the “Gang-Free Zone” signs.

Filthy Music

Oh, this sign is so ironic.  This was part of the Kansas City Star’s photo gallery that accompanied their version of the 64130 story.

Sheriff of the Light Rail

Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who first came to fame by incarcerating certain guests of the county in tents, is now utilizing the Valley’s newly-opened light rail to transport inmates and save money.

KSDK:

Sheriff uses public light rail system to transport prisoners

Joe Arpaio claims he has to resort to public transit because the city suspended his free parking privileges away at the airport.

Currently, law enforcement agencies can park at Sky Harbor for free as long as they call before hand. A spokesperson for the airport even says the sheriff is currently using the free system. But Joe Arpaio says it’s a lie.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio says “they took away our private parking many years ago. They have not allowed us parking.”

When St. Louis’s light rail opened in 1993, it was not so humorously called the Drug Link, because of its eastern end in East St. Louis, and passed through North St. Louis.  When a law enforcement official for (IIRC) Richmond Heights cited young blacks being brought in by the Metro Link as the reason for increased crime and violence at the Galleria, he was roundly criticized by the media, meaning he was right.

Southern Illinois’ Gain Is Mississippi’s Loss

Hell, I didn’t know that SIUC had many papers relating to the life and progeny of one U.S.eless Grant.  If I actually cared that much, I would make it a point to go take a look at some of them, because they’re going to be moved to Mississippi State University in Starkville.

I new that U.S.eless Grant was stationed in this part of Illinois during the early years of the war, before he became a General.  And that’s ironic because this part of Illinois was pro-Confederate, because most of the early settlers of far southern Illinois were from the upper South.

All I can say is good riddance, take your St. Louis “farm” with you.

She’s Probably Not Jewish

Shorpy has this provocative photo from 1922.  Actually, in those days, that symbol didn’t carry a negative connotation, as the state of Arizona used it on its state route shields almost until the start of American involvement in WWII.

Public Enemy Number One

Congressional Democrats, Republicans come out against Rush Limbaugh.

In doing so, they have dedicated more energy in the past several days to vilify a talk radio host than they have AQ and OBL in the last seven years.

The response is easy:  No attack on a talk radio host ever fed a hungry child.

Body of Water

So, I’m channel surfing, and a commercial advertising this event for this coming weekend appears:

http://www.intlhouseboatfest.com/

An exposition for houseboats, in LOUISVILLE???  Wouldn’t it be better to have a houseboat show in a place, well, I dunno, NEAR AN OCEAN?  Or a major lake for that matter.  Kinda hard to have a houseboat on the Ohio River, might be hard to sleep for all the barges going by.

Ironically, Louisville became a significant city because the Ohio once had rapids in that area that precluded safe passage of commercial traffic, and certainly prohibited upstream traffic, so everything and everyone had to be unloaded, then reloaded downstream/upstream from the rapids.  Louisville grew out of the economic opportunities that became people and products coming on dry land.  Something quite a bit different than living on water.

UDPATE 2/9: Apparently, Kentucky is a big houseboating state.  There is a houseboat manufacturer in southeastern Kentucky; NPR had a story about how they’re having hard times in this recession.

Fun With Clothing, or the Lack Thereof

P-D:  Can Irene J. Smith Rise Above the 2001 Incident?

No, she’ll squat below it.

KSDK:  UFC to open line of gyms for regular folks

The cages will be made of blood-resistant metal.

Francis Slay:  Mr. Slay Waits, Waits For The Punchline

I thought he was the punchline.

AFP:  Global warming ‘irreversible’ for next 1000 years: study

Okay, I’ll put all my coats, hats, scarves and gloves into a 1001-year time capsule.

AP/Obama:  Calif. governor wants to tax golf, auto repairs

Every mulligan will now have a $20 excise.

AP/Obama:  Obama tells Arabic network US is ‘not your enemy’

Was disappointed when nobody yelled out “Obama u akbar” after the interview.

Time:  Playboy Shows Signs of Withdrawal

Hugh Hefner cursing Al Gore for having invented the internet.

LiveScience:  Scientists Zero In on Earth’s Original Animal

TMZ zeroes in on Earth’s original party animal.

PC World:  Western Digital Launches World-First 2TB Hard Drive

Now finally, the bailout/stimulus bill can be digititized and saved.

InfoWorld:  A Mac user’s take on the Windows 7 UI

“There’s something so familiar about all of this.”

Reuters:  Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” to become musical show

A draft script leaked to the media shows that Daniel Radcliffe will be reprising his Equus role and pretending he’s 13.

I Should Have Kept My Trap Shut

Me, on March 29, 2007, about a young man in the Melbourne, Fla. Police Explorers program pretending to be a real cop for a short time:

He used his knowledge of the workings of the department to take a police cruiser, dress up as a real cop, and he even made one traffic stop. Unfortunately, a real Melbourne cop pulled over to help him, as apparently Melbourne, Florida is crime-free enough such that multiple squad cars can do one minor traffic top. The real cop then noticed the fake cop and took him in.

If he would have tried this in a busy urban department like St. Louis, he might have gotten away with the scam for longer than he did. That is because the SLPD is so busy that having more than one cruiser do a regular traffic stop is a severe waste of resources that are needed to scrape murder victims off of back alley pavements.

Whaddaya know, MSNBC has news from Chicago about another Explorer:

On Saturday the teen, wearing an officer’s uniform, walked into a police station and was assigned to go on patrol. He partnered with another officer for about five hours before the ruse was discovered.

The boy did not have a gun, never issued any tickets and didn’t drive the squad car, Deputy Superintendent Daniel Dugan said.

Assistant Superintendent James Jackson said the ruse was discovered only after the boy’s patrol with an actual officer ended Saturday. Officers noticed his uniform lacked a star that is part of the regulation uniform.

Police said they were investigating how the deception went undetected for so long in what they described as a serious security breach.

How could this other cop be so dumb as not to pick up on it, or ask questions?  Oh, I forgot, this is affirmative action crazy Chicagograd.

Neighborhood Watch in a Web 2.0 World — It’s a White Thang, You Better Understand.

Wonder of all wonders, the CSM links race and crime.  I wouldn’t have believed it if someone would have told me, so I had to read it to believe it.

But it’s not all peaches and cream, at least for our side:

Citizen awareness is part of the foundation of modern policing, born when 19th century London bobbies used whistles to call in civilian backup.

But community fear has in the past turned to violence in a country where vigilantism has sometimes flourished.

The Nation magazine recently reported that after hurricane Katrina, vigilantes killed several black men for simply walking through a neighborhood. Several registered sex offenders have also been killed. Citizen patrols became a controversy in New Haven, Conn., in 2007 when the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol included some armed with licensed firearms.

“If it’s largely white citizen groups trying to protect new turf, you run the risk of creating flash points,” says Stan Stojkovic, dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “But to me, this is a much different kind of situation. There’s hope in this kind of thing, as long as it evolves into … a form of integration.”

So, in other words, it’s bad for white people to do something about non-white crime. Then again, 90% of the faculty at something called “School of Social Welfare” probably would stand up and cheer if white people were exterminated from the face of the Earth at the hands of non-white criminals and gangs.

This bit about “vigilantes killing several black men” has to do with a rumor, very much disputed by area law enforcement, and started by some kooks to impugn the mostly white New Orleans neighborhood of Algeirs, so of course The Nation would print it and promulgate it as gospel truth, all of it was to cover up black crime post-hurricane, and because black radicals in New Orleans are still jealous that Algeirs wasn’t hit that hard and was the first NO neighborood to get electricity restored.

As far as the New Haven, Conn., thing, the answer is probably that a few of them have conceal-carry permits.  Gee, I wonder why one would want to have a CCW permit when dealing with violent crime.  Duh…

Also:

NSA crime prevention specialist Robbie Woodson links the uptick directly to the Congressional decision in 2007 to cut community policing grants by 68 percent, much of which had been aimed at low-level crime in transitional neighborhoods. Ms. Woodson says President Obama’s inaugural call for “a new era of responsibility” took direct aim at what she sees as a widening gap – both perceived and real – between criminal activity and the ability of police to control it.

“It’s an absolute perfect storm,” says Woodson. “[Federal policing grants] were cut before the economic crisis, which is just now playing out on the law enforcement front. And now you have people being laid off, and some of those people are going to start stealing in a variety of different ways.”

In this the Era of Obama, the Federal government (or the lack thereof) is going to be an easy and convenient whipping boy.   The hard truth of the matter is that in these areas where citizen patrols are being started or are functional, the local cops have enough power to solve the problem.  The big stumbling block is that the typical violent criminal, because he is of a minority persuasion, is somewhat protected by Federal Civil Rights laws, and many of the Hispanic ones (mentioned in the CSM article), because the immigration question comes into play, the open borders lobby has been successful enough to hamper ICE and the USBP such that illegal alien crime is semi-countenanced by the Federal government.

Attention Mike Cox — You Wanna Be Governor of Michigan? Read Below.

You already have so many things going for you — In a liberal state like Michigan, you have nads of steel to support MCRI (which won, BTW — eat it, Media Mouse), to crack down on illegal aliens as much as a state Attorney General can, and to bring Dirt-Rot Mayor Kwame “I Won Bitches” Kilpatrick to justice.

I have an idea on how to put you over the top.

Charge the CEO of Bay City Electric Light and Power with murder.

You may not get a conviction, and a judge would probably dismiss the case summarily, but you’ll score a lot of brownie points with Michigan voters.  Hell, what’s wrong with a little bit of demagoguery?  You need 51% of those “demos” to win.