Ooh, Cat Fight

Claire’s bitch-slapping Nancy over her attempt to procure three Gulfstreams with your money.  I wonder what Nancy’s retort will be?  If you’re reading, dear, I’ll give you a suggestion:  It involves Joseph Shepard-owned nursing homes.

Dees Vows to Charge For All Online Content

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (FNN) — Morris Dees has vowed to charge for all the here to now free of charge online content of Southern Poverty Law Center material, going well beyond his prediction in May that the Center had lined up numerous advertising sponsors for its internet presences.

The comments by SPLC’s founder came as he predicted a “high triple digit” rebound in the organization’s operating profits next year.   The worst of the paranoia-industrial complex slump might be behind the Center, he said, as he reported “some good signs of life” in the right-wing extremist movement.

Overall revenues would be down “very low double digits” next year, but growth in media properties such as Teaching Tolerance TV would leave advertising revenues flat and total revenue up only 12 per cent.

DeesCorp put the seal on a woeful fiscal year with a fourth- quarter net profit of $753m, dragged down by $680m in Gucci account debt service and retroactive salary increases for key staff members, including publications director Mark Potok, and jack of all trades Heidi Beirich, Ph.D.

An internal document obtained by Fake News Network proposes a $79.95 per year all access pass to splcenter.org, the SPLC’s main website, or various daily, weekly and monthly passes for lower prices.  Also proposed is a 10 cent per word plagiarism fee, levied by the SPLC against mainstream news media or progressive alternative sources that lift SPLC verbage for news/propaganda reports.  At one point, the document quotes Morris Dees as saying that “this cutting and pasting by the news media without proper monetary tribue has got to change.”  The Center estimates that a 10 cent per word levy would raise $1.8 billion per year.

Shares of DeesCorp plummeted in today’s trading, by $251 to $9,309 per share.  In spite of that, DeesCorp remains the world’s most expensive stock, and its market capitalization is still higher than Google, Apple, Starbucks, Death Row Records, Trader Joe’s and France combined.

“Health Concerns”

KTVI:

Restaurant Threatens To Kick Out Baby Not Wearing Shoes

SUNSET HILLS, MO (KTVI – FOX2now.com) – No shoes, no shirt, no service: there is word that the manager of a St. Louis County restaurant threatened to kick out a six-month old baby and her mother because the baby wasn’t wearing shoes. The infant’s mom says the restaurant is taking the policy too far. Jennifer Frederich said the manager of the Sunset Hills Burger King at 10734 Sunset Hills Plaza cited ‘health concerns’.

Frederich said her daughter, Kaylin, was too young to even get her feet dirty; she couldn’t walk, couldn’t crawl, her feet still pretty much too small for shoes.

I’ve eaten at that particular Burger King before, plus a few others.  Believe me:  For a fast feeder manufacturing facility that microwaves its hamburger mystery meat (you can call it “beef” if you want), to throw a baby out for not wearing shoes is a bit hypocritical.

Motive

P-D:

Major Case Squad called in to investigate death of young man in East St. Louis

EAST ST. LOUIS — Homicide detectives are trying to identify a young man whose body was found in East St. Louis on Tuesday night.

The victim is a black male, 17 to 20 years old who was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt and red-and-white athletic shoes. His hair was in a mohawk-style. He had tattoos on his right and left forearm and a scar on his right forearm.

I’ve noticed lately, i.e. in the past six months, that mohawks are suddenly the in thing among young black men.  They must not realize that the 1980s are over.

I have two theories on why he was killed — Either the crips saw his shoes, or the bloods saw his jeans.

Transferrance

P-D:

Democrats charge extremism in new “Mob” ad

(snip)

The Web spot, called “Enough of the Mob,” is the Democratic Party’s response to the feisty receptions that members of Congress have been experiencing back home on health care and other matters.

The minute-long ad, with video from public meetings, asserts that “the right-wing extremist Republican base” has overtaken the GOP.

“THEY’RE BACK,” words on the screen declare before an announcer asserts that Republicans lost the last election “and the confidence of the American people.”

More: “Now, desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies are organizing angry mobs just like they did during the election. Their goal: Destroy President Obama and stop the change Americans voted overwhelmingly for in November.

“This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican operatives. They have no plan for moving our country forward. So they’ve called out the mob,” the announcer says.

It’s called “transferrance” — you see your own qualities in other people, even if said qualities are not a significant characteristic of the other person.  The Democrats are making these accusations because that’s what they are themselves, a bunch of George Soros 527-funded rent-a-mob astroturfers.

Help Wanted

Need a good job?  Many of you do.

Many sheriff’s offices and requisite law enforcement agencies need people to help do the paperwork to process the sudden spike in conceal carry application permits.

Fun With the Irrational

UK Telegraph:  Birdwatchers ‘having sex in hides’

The news came out a few days ago that one in five Americans are birdwatchers.  Now we know why.

UK Telegraph:  More than 100 children a day convicted of criminal offences

I have a theory:  Because more than 100 children a day are committing criminal offences.

V-Dare:  The Sierra Club Racially Disparages Its Mostly White Membership

Then don’t allow any more whites to join the Sierra Club.  We’ll see how long the SC lasts after that.

P-D:  Gov. Jay Nixon gets salute from Boy Scouts

Will Jay Nixon ever be able to live down his links to notorious right-wing homophobic paramilitary units?  This news isn’t going to go over very well in Buggeryville.

John Lott:  California reduce its prison population by 25 percent

Good, I’m glad to hear that Californians are 25 percent better behaved.

CNS:  As Clinton Heads Home With Freed Americans, Questions Surround His Visit to North Korea

We won’t have an answer for nine months.

CNS:  TV Ad Urges Brazilians to Pee in Shower

I’m sure that the small percentage of Brazilians whose tin shacks have running water will take heed.

KSDK:  Web rant of fitness club killer claimed he hadn’t had sex in 19 years

I can just see the ad campaign that comes out of this:  Stop the Violence, Make a Fist.

AP:  Obama says Indiana ‘factories coming back to life’

The fast food joints did open this morning.

AP:  Iowa 911 call center becomes first to accept texts

It’ll be just their luck that they outsource this call center to Bangalore, and the txtmsg responses will be in Hindi.

AP:  President and first lady make best dressed list

Put out by which magazine, Potato Sack Weekly?

Reuters:  Paula Abdul quits “American Idol,” giving no reason

Just like everything Paula Abdul does, there’s no reason.

Expiration Date

I was making supper earlier this evening, and what I was fixing required a can of whole kernel corn.  (No, it wasn’t the Taco Casserole.)  I grabbed the first can I found in my cabinet, and I remember that it had been a long time, probably at the beginning of the year, that I bought it.  Just to make sure, I checked the date stamped on the can.

09/11/11.

September 11, 2011.

Just to whet the superstitious nature I really don’t have, I picked out another can of corn, this one expired in 2013, with my triskadekaphobic self at that.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing.

Sparty and Friends:

Apparently former Gator and now Minnesota Viking wide receiver Percy Harvin was invited by some Florida coaches to come speak to a few recruits about his time at the university.  The idea was to give them an NFL player’s perspective on how the school helped him not only get to the NFL, but also how they made him a better player in general.  Well, things started great as he talked about how good the staff was to the players, how they won a couple championships, and how they helped him become a NFL first rounder…then he started keeping it real.

What we’re hearing:

- Harvin discussed his continuous pot use, and how he was able to smoke it for the majority of his time at UF.

- Harvin also confirmed the long time rumor that he made a mistake and choked his wide receivers coach, and how the school gave him a second chance by covering it up so the media didn’t report it.

- He also talked about the benefits that being a Gator brought to the party scene in Gainesville.

Ooh, I’m so shocked.

About ten years ago, maybe a little more, I was reading something on ESPN’s website about a University of Oregon football recruit.  After he toured the campus, he told his parents that officials from the university promised him “all the booze, sex and weed” that he could handle.  When the parents confronted the U’s officials, they denied the part about the weed.

A Dollar Short and a Kid Late

NYP:  POLICE: WRONG-WAY DRIVER WAS ‘DRUNK’ ON VODKA AND ‘HIGH’ IN TACONIC CRASH

Drunk, high and driving is a combination that never ends well.

Wired:  Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

Good luck recruiting 17-year olds now.

CNS:  Antigua’s Highest Peak Renamed ‘Mount Obama’

Now, who will be the first to scale this 1,300-ft. behemoth?

Take Two:  CNS:  Antigua’s Highest Peak Renamed ‘Mount Obama’

Makes as much sense as Kansas renaming its highest peak ‘Mount Obama.’

CNS:  Researchers Studying Depression in Children as Young as 3

Just what could a three-year old be depressed about?  The burger in the Happy Meal is smaller?  This year’s Barbie mismatches her shoes with her blouse?

Chicago Sun-Times:  Prisons not the answer to crime problems: Attorney General

He’s right.  We haven’t yet given serious consideration to his idea that we should ask thugs nicely to be have.

KSDK:  Illinois Health Director issues bat warning

They’re too much focused on bats and not enough on vultures.

AP:  Dem, GOP leaders say Senate will vote on clunkers

They have to change the language slightly because too many Senate Democrats and a few of the Republicans would qualify as tradeable clunkers.

AP:  RI students to cops: don’t brand our party houses

Why not?  I would want to know where all the good parties are.

Reuters:  Pricetag to raise a child — $291,570, says U.S.

My bank account balance is only $291,569.  Does this mean I can’t have a kid?

Time:  The Luxury Brand Effect: Should BMW Sell Ketchup?

I wish they would; I want to avoid Heinz for the obvious reasons, but all the other brands suck.

Politico:  Obama vs. Drudge

Obama has nothing to worry about if he’s not doodling any interns.

AP:  Can ABC’s `Millionaire’ lightning strike twice?

The selling point this time, compared to ten years ago, could be “Which Former Millionaire Wants to Be a Millionaire?”  (Note:  If you care about your lunch, don’t click the link to this article.  It’s not a pretty picture.)

Headline Skelter

NYP:  CHARLES MANSON’S SECRET PRISON BUSINESS

I’m more interested in the kind of person that would want to buy Charles Manson’s autograph.

KFVS:  1 in 5 Americans is a birdwatcher, report says

Now they’ll start calling them “birders.”

CNS:  Geithner Floats Obama’s Next Potential Big Move: A Tax Hike on the Middle Class

I did the math, and President Obama is breaking one campaign promise a month.

CNS:  Conyers Says He’s a ‘Great Advocate’ of Sarah Palin

Give John Conyers credit — he too can see a foreign country from his house.

CNS:  Los Angeles Using Multiple-Choice Test in Attempt to Find Kids Likely to Join Gangs

I’m waiting for the first accusation that the test is culturally biased.

CNS:  Israelis Rally After Two Murdered at Center for Gay Teens

Sure, let’s fiddle while the Palestinians want Tel Aviv to burn.

Jihad Watch:  UK jihad leader says Queen should be prosecuted for genocide against Muslims

Which would be a job that falls to a Crown Prosecutor.

P-D:  Baseball tournament in memory of boy killed by baseball

Like holding a barbecue to honor an arson victim.

KSDK:  Do you use a device to beat red light cameras?

Yes, my brakes.

LiveScience:  Save the Planet: Have Fewer Kids

That’s because us white people are fucking up the world by having too many children.

“No Child Get Ahead” Not Working To Prevent Smart Kids From Getting Ahead

P-D:

Super-smart kids get Reno academy

Back home in Boise, Idaho, Rachel was too bright for her own good. She was isolated from girls her own age who wanted to talk only about boys and shopping, and cut off from her teachers who seemed to regard her as an annoying brat.

Rachel’s mother, Jae Ellison, wondered if her daughter, with so much brain power, would even graduate from high school.

Today Rachel, 16, is headed to MIT after graduating from the Davidson Academy, a free public high school on the campus at the University of Nevada-Reno that caters to the profoundly gifted — those who might be considered geniuses.

With so much attention on the federal No Child Left Behind Act, advocates for exceptionally smart kids often complain that the brightest students, too, are being denied the opportunity to realize their potential.

The reason for that is that NCLB requires schools to teach down to the lowest common denominator and teach to a relatively mundane and uncalculating standardized test.  Certainly, this is not a good formula for smarter kids to get ahead, especially since NCLB has racial equality mandates, funded by grants from the tooth fairy and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

However, I don’t think NCLB will have a deleterious effect on the smartest of the smart in the long run.  I have heard IQ described as the size of your bucket and education as the amount of water in the bucket.  Some people can have big buckets but hardly any water, some people can have smaller buckets that are filled to the brim.  I don’t have anything close to proof or intellectual development or credible scholarship around what I’m about to say, but I am of the belief that large enough buckets will inevitably self-fill with water.  To translate the metaphor, even if you exile high-IQ geniuses to really crummy school districts, their intellectual capacity is so high that it creates an insatiable intellectual curiosity, so they find ways to teach themselves.  They read ahead in their school textbooks, they partake of the services of public or private libraries, they gravitate towards intelligent peers or adults, or if that’s not available, they just observe and experiment with the world around them.

I’m not a world-beating genius, but I sorta put myself into that category — when I was in the third grade, I was walking home with my mother from the bank that she used at the time, which was within a comfortable waking distance from where we lived.  We passed by a back alley where a couple of old math books were deposited by the side of a dumpster.  They were 6th through 8th grade advanced arithmetic and pre-algebra texts, the copyright dates were 1957 and 1963.  My mother took them home, cleaned them up, and dumped them in my lap.  Within a year, I had the material in those books mastered, and this was the kind of material I wouldn’t encounter in school until the start of the sixth grade.  My sixth grade math teacher, or rather, the one I would have had all year had I stayed in that class, acted on a hunch after the first week of school, and gave me what would have been questions from the end of year test in that class, and I aced it.  At that point, the school figured that it was time to bump me up to algebra with the 8th graders.  I got my usual A, though it was kind of a headache for the school’s admins for my 7th and 8th grade years, because they had to special order textbooks so that the school’s algebra teacher could isolate me separately during her regular algebra period and take me further up the latter.  For those two school years, I gave myself my own geometry (7th), and advanced algebra and logic (8th) homework and tests.  I was able to do trig in my freshman year of high school, and calculus my sophomore year.  I skipped math my junior year; my HS didn’t offer a second calculus year.  I would have taken Calculus II at Harris-Stowe, St. Louis’s HBCU, during the fall semester of my senior year of HS, but HSSC canceled Calc II that semester because I was the only person that had enrolled, none of its real students did.  Luckily, one of the three junior colleges in St. Louis, but only one, which so happened to be the whitest campus, the one in Kirkwood, offered Calc II and III, and still had seats open for II at the time.  So I went to SLCC-Meramec that fall for II, and then the following spring for III.  I graduated from high school with AP college credit for Calc I, real college credit for II and III, and AP Western Civ.  The point of my rambling here is that intellect seems to find a way.

To take the analogy even further, I am of the opinion that someone with a very high IQ born and raised on a desterted island, with absolutely no chance of leaving the island, who has enough on that island to subsist through childhood and adulthood, and never privy to written or spoken language, will, through the power of observation, come to understand a lot about the world around him or her.  S/he would understand why certain stars and star patterns are only observable during certain parts of the year, why the air is a somewhat warmer or cooler based on how high or low the sun is in its diurnal and annual patterns, that especially dark skies portend bad storms, that there is a crucial difference between the water of the ocean and the water of the island’s streams, the life cycles and ruidmentary taxonomy of plants and animals, and many other things.  In other words, his bucket would be self-filling with water.

On the “Birther” Issue

The debate over President Obama’s real place of birth has made it to the lamestream media.  So it’s all begging me for my opinion on the matter.

As a bit of background, the reason the issue is an issue at all is that American immigration law in the year of the President’s birth did not automatically make you an American citizen if one of your two parents was an American citizen.  If you were the child of a citizen and a non-citizen, the law in those days only recognized you as a citizen if your birthplace was in the United States or an American territory.  The law is different today, but the status of the law before the law was changed was not part of the 1965 changes.

Some birthers also questioned John McCain’s citizenship during last year’s election season.  However, the Obama issue and the McCain issue aren’t the same thing.  John Sidney McCain III was born in American territory (the Panama Canal Zone) to two American parents, one of whom was an Admiral in the Navy, as his father’s father was.  It’s all part of the “natural born citizen” requirement of the U.S. Constitution of Presidents.  The phrase has never really had its day in court, and it is vague on its face and therefore has a huge gray area.

However, because the pre-1965 immigration law is clear, the only question left is the origin of the President’s real birth certificate.  And there’s where my opinion on the matter comes in.  I think that the person of Barack Hussein Obama II was born in the state of Hawaii, and does have a legitimate birth certificate from the jurisdiction where he was born.  However, I think that the President himself, either on his own Machiavellian instincts, or on the advice of Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod, isn’t releasing the real document in order to create a distraction, a diversion.  In other words, he wants right wingers to follow around a tempest in a tea pot instead of focusing on his policies and proposals, and organizing real opposition to those things.  (That part hasn’t worked, at least not to the extent that it keeps people from chewing out their elected representatives  about health care during town hall meetings.)  Plus, it has the double benefit (for the President) of being able to portray his opponents as low down punch-under-the-belt kooks and zealots.  That said, some people are giving the birther issue a second look, on the basis of the President’s honesty alone.  But that’s not the point.  I don’t think the President is dishonest (at least in this case), I think it’s his, Rahm’s or Axelrod’s Machiavellian propensities.

Not only that, I have opined in this space before that if the birther issue gets into the Federal judiciary, they would weasel out by (1) interpreting “natural born citizen” as being an offspring of one American citizen, no matter where in the world you are born, and/or (2) finding that the pre-1965 immigration law was unconstitutional, and therefore the President’s being in violation of it was moot.

Straighten Up and Fly Right

KFVS:

Caruthersville school leaders make changed with Turnaround Project

CARUTHERSVILLE, MO (KFVS) – Several Heartland education leaders take steps to turn around their schools.

Administrators from Caruthersville, Kennett, Hayti, Senath-Hornersville, and Charleston recently took a trip to the University of Virgina to participate in a school Turnaround Project.

(snip)

The school has been deemed low performing under the No Child Left Behind Act.  Superintendent  J.J. Bullington says it’s not because the students’ test scores have gotten lower over the years.

(snip)

Schools in St. Louis, Kansas City, and others in the Bootheel find themselves in the same place as Caruthersville.

I wonder what the similarity could be between St. Louis, Kansas City and the listed districts int he delta that they need to be “turned around.”  Anyone want to help me out here?

Makes You Wonder

A Turkish cracker has defaced at least 147 Dutch websites with various radical Islamic messages and with simian portrayals of Dutch politican Geert Wilders, though Wilders’s party’s website was not affected.  It makes you wonder — is Turkey really the bastion of secular moderation that we keep hearing that they are?  If the American foreign policy establishment had its way, people like this cracker would have the ability to go anywhere in Europe that he wants.  Pleasant thought, isn’t it?

Sunday Wrap-Up

(1)  Who’s the dork that’s complaining about the LAT’s Homicide Blog printing the race of victims and suspects?  I’m complaining that most of the MSM don’t, and in fact have a policy of not doing so if the suspects are non-white.

(2)  Hispanic residents of the Hawaiian Gardens neighborhood of Long Beach are complaining that (dorkey and useless) anti-gang injunctions on the part of the Federal judiciary are unfairly targeting young Hispanic men.  The ad hoc group is called RAGE (Residents Against Gentrification Efforts).  Now, if they don’t do this, and Hispanic crime goes way up, these very same protesters will complain about the authorities being bigoted in not stopping crime in their neighborhoods.  Except this situation is a bit different, because it’s an outgrowth of the black-Hispanic gang wars in southern California.  I’d like to know where these authorities are when blacks and Hispanics commit hate crimes against whites.  We don’t even get as much as an injunction.

(3)  The Brown government will soon outlaw private organ transplant and donation arrangements.  The official reason is to keep rich people from cutting through the line.  I think another reason, taboo that it is, is race.  The Brown government doesn’t want white people to keep organs “in house.”  Like the American health care system is jonesing to deny health care to whites, Harrison Bergeron like, to assuage complaints of so-called “health care discrimination,” the Brits I think are thinking of the same thing — giving organs to non-whites ahead of whites.

(4)  One of the “black panther” Obama polling place stormtroopers in Philadelphia went on a MySpace rage after Obama’s affirmative action Just-Us Department let him off the hook.  And why wouldn’t he?  The message of the whole affair is that actions don’t have consequences.

(5)  Ashton Kutcher was a fake?  Like he’s not now?

(6)  What does my sandwich say about me?  I need to go on a diet.

(7)  There’s nowhere you can run to get away from diversity, not even video games.  The equality industry is whining about too many adult white men portrayed in video games.  (Gee, I wonder why).  And not enough minorities, children or old people.  (Wait 30 years, when today’s 40-year old gamers will be 70-year old gamers.)  Okay, let’s solve this problem.  In the next version of Call of Duty, you’re a black American man who has to shoot down Arab children and old Afghani women.  Let’s see how the civil rights bunch and the no torture crowd likes that.  The study claims that video “games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math, and that without these groups represented properly, it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.”  I highly doubt that anyone of any race that plays video games or designs them is going to sequence the human genome.

A Recession Proof Business

Back in the days when this medium served another purpose, someone I knew provided me with the above flyer that I scanned in, and some commentary on the issue. The server that hosted the image went kerplunk; luckily, I still have the scanned-in image, and I uploaded it to WordPress.  Now you can see it above in its full glory.  Remember that this ad is almost four years old, and inflation combined with African estimation of chrome surely will have driven these prices upward.  If only for the good ole days when you could get chrome for as little as a thousand bucks.  It makes me wonder:  Even the retro-spinning kind of these wheels probably don’t have $200 worth of material in them, and they’re selling them for two grand.  It’s the kind of high margin business I’d like to be in.

And evidently, Rent-n-Roll is a recession proof business.  You know how it goes, we can’t pay the utility bills, and we don’t have enough money to buy food or medical insurance, because those shiny wheels are necessities, after all.   The 1490 AM station in St. Louis that started its all-black sports talk plus Onion Horton format last week is now airing ads from Rent-n-Roll.  RnR is also buying ads on other black stations in St. Louis, from my assessment of the St. Louis radio dial while back there earlier today.  It’s nice to have enough money to advertise.  It might pay, but it also costs.  Not only that, 1490 AM and one of its personalities, Maurice Scott, (who, like Onion Horton, is a longtime hanger-on within the black radio industry in St. Louis), did a live remote from RnR’s St. Louis location today in the 90-hundred block of Page, just west of 170.  Part of the allure of the live remote was for people who have purchased wheels from RnR to roll up and down Page to show off their hooptees.  Page is becoming the Crenshaw of St. Louis.

Which is a shame, because I used to go to that area, not a whole lot, but relatively frequently, for a much different reason:  Just east of 170 on Page, once you cross the railroad bridge and descend down a big hill, and on the north side of the street, was Gateway Electronics, St. Louis’s only ham radio electronics and equipment dealer.  And they had a great showroom, too:  Gateway was the only place in STL where I could see cadillac very high end HF rigs from Yaesu and Icom on display, (several thousand bucks up to more than ten grand), powered up, properly tuned, and ready for a “test drive,” so to speak.  Being as my ham license didn’t afford me anything below 30 MHz, I couldn’t take them for a test drive, but Gateway had an outstanding, almost catalog-like selection of VHF/UHF HTs.  My first and second HTs, both Yaesus, were bought from Gateway.

I can imagine that Gateway has moved out of that neighborhood, because the crowd that likes to roll hooptees with expensive chrome retro-spinning wheels up and down the street also likes to break glass and steal expensive electronics, which of course is how many of them get the money to buy the wheels.  The only fortunate thing is that these particular people would have no idea what to do with ham rigs, nor do any of the kind of people they might hawk it to.  (I’ll give you a hint:  They’re not PlayStation 3s.)  And there’s no way in hell that legit hams, who get FCC licenses, are going to turn around and buy hot rigs.